Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes. Bright lemon cupcakes with fresh blueberries topped with lemon cream cheese frosting. Garnished with lemon zest and more blueberries.
Blueberries and lemons are a match that was simply meant to be. This fresh blueberry-studded cupcake is infused with lemon zest and topped with a tangy lemon cream cheese frosting, creating a flavor combination that is refreshing, bright and incredibly tempting. So tempting that you might have a hard time resisting these Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes.
LEMON BLUEBERRY CUPCAKES
a recipe by Carrie Sellman
{makes 30 cupcakes}
3 cups cake flour + extra for coating blueberries
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
zest of 1 organic lemon
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cup blueberries
- Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tins with cupcake wrappers. This recipe makes 30 cupcakes.
- Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- Gently toss blueberries with a light coating of flour. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium-high using the paddle attachment. Beat until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes.
- With the mixer on low, add eggs one at a time. Mix well after each egg.
- Add vanilla extract and lemon zest. Mix to combine.
- Add one third of your dry ingredients and mix on low, just until combined.
- Add one half of your milk. Mix gently.
- Add in remaining ingredients, alternating dry, wet, dry. Do not over mix.
- Using a spoon or spatula, gently fold blueberries into batter, being careful not to break berries.
- Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full with batter.
- Bake 17-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- Let cupcakes cool in pan for 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack until completely cool.
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting:
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
2 pounds confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 organic lemon, zest and juice
- Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and cream cheese until smooth.
- Add vanilla, lemon zest and juice and mix until combined.
- Gradually add confectioners sugar until completely combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Whip until smooth.
For the Assembly:
Once cupcakes are cool, swirl cream cheese frosting onto each cupcake using a pastry bag fitted with a #2A tip. Garnish with strips of lemon zest and extra blueberries. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
TIP: If the icing is not holding its shape while decorating, refrigerate icing 20-30 minutes. The chilled icing with pipe nicely into a soft swirl.
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
Lemon Blueberry Cake
Candied Lemon Bundt Cake
Lemon Meringue Cake
Lemon Poppy Seed Donuts
Lemon Slice Cake Toppers
These look delicious! As if blueberry muffins weren’t bad enough for us already, add icing….but man it looks tasty and I love how they are decorated! I will definitely be making some 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Ha! Yes, I know… but they are quite tasty and pretty simple too. Hope you enjoy!
Blueberry and lemon go together so well! I think it’s just the overt sweetness of the blueberry that makes the lemon taste like lemonade. These cupcakes look beautiful, and paired with some strawberry cupcakes, they’d be a great addition to a Fourth of July potluck. Got to remember that for later!
Definitely! Great suggestion for the Fourth!
These look so yummy! Will have to try them with lemon cream cheese frosting!
Gorgeous cupcakes! I always eat way too many cupcakes too, but they are worth it.
Thanks Ashley! Glad to see I’m not the only one. 🙂
Carrie, what a lovely cupcake! The perfect gift. Thanks for the recipe and the well-done photos.
Awesome Post! I like this flavor.I will try to mak ethis cak efor my brother’s birthday. This is the little gift from my side.
I tried these with frozen blueberries since there are no fresh ones here in the Philippines and they still turned out great! My friends all praised me for it.
I love the fact that you used cream cheese instead of the usual lemon buttercream. I’ll be trying more of your recipes. ❤
Thank you for posting this. I’ve been looking for the best lemon cupcake and I think I found the one I like best 🙂
Thank you, glad you enjoyed them Mian!
Where did you find those wonderful dark blue cupcake papers?
I believe I purchased the cupcake wrappers at Michael’s. I have a jar of wrappers that I pull from when baking cupcakes, so sometimes it’s hard to remember where a specific liner was purchased. 😉
Again – FABULOUS. The only thing I hate and it has nothing to do with you or the recipe, lol. I’m from the Caribbean, so we don’t usually have the option of the beautiful fresh blueberries, we usually have them imported and they’re then located in the frozen section of the food stores, but you know what – I LOVE THIS SOOOOO MUCH, frozen or fresh, I’m looking forward to making this. It’s So YUM!
My 14 year old niece made these for her birthday dessert (she loves to bake). I got my hands on one of these and was amazed! Completely gourmet! Moist, buttery cake with subtle lemon flavor complemented by lemony cream cheese frosting! These are what you find in a high end bakery. Definitely not your average cupcake. I can’t wait to make them myself!
That’s great to hear Sally! Thanks for the feedback.
This is the first time I hear about a blueberry lemon combo. Then again, I come from Cyprus and there are no blueberries there. Now, that I’m living in a northern country I’ll definitely give this a go.
Hello, I plan to make these and have always had trouble halving the recipe as it does not seem to come out right. Could you tell me how i can use this recipe to make probably 6 cup cakes? What would you mean by lemon zest? Do you just grate the outer skin of a yellow lemon?
This recipe makes 30 cupcakes. I do not recommend cutting the recipe in half. Your friends will enjoy the extras!
Yes, lemon zest is the outer yellow layer of a lemon. Use a microplane grater to create a fine zest.
Blueberries are a luxury fruit to afford in my country because they don’t thrive with the weather we have. However I would love try to make this one with what blueberries I can find in exchange. I found a blueberry filling and I think dried? Must try to find out. Thank you for this recipe!
I’d like to make this recipe into a cake … And pair it with your speckle cake! Will it hold up OK to make a cake out of the cupcake recipe?
This recipe has not been tested as a cake, but it sounds delicious!
These cupcakes look awesome! Do you think this recipe work with almond milk instead of whole milk? Or would I just have to experiment lol
Sorry, I have not tried this recipe with almond milk. I have swapped milk for rice milk in several other recipes with pretty good results.
I just made these and the recipe was sort of unclear with what to do with the set aside blueberries. I put three on top but they never sunk down they just stayed on top. Maybe if I fold them into the batter next time. But they taste good!
Does this use 2 lbs of confectioner sugar? Or 2tbs?
Yes, it’s two pounds of confectioners sugar. AKA a large bag of powdered sugar.
i made this yesterday…. it taste lemony so fresh… im planning to give it away to all my neighbors since we’re moved into new neighborhood. but for frosting i made only half batch …its enough for 20 cupcake …i didn’t frosted the other four 🙂 but i love the flavor of blueberry and lemon together. im sure i will making this one again soon. thanks for sharing your recipes with us
Glad you gave them a try Santhi! Cupcakes are a great way to make new friends. Hope your new house soon feels like home.
These look yummy – I made some very similar cupcakes earlier this week and they were lovely – really light and fresh. A great recipe for summer: https://blogamomma.com/blueberry-lemon-cupcakes/
Do you have suggestions to stop fresh fruit from bleeding on frosting? I’ve found that if I top cupcakes or cake with fresh fruit, the juices come flowing out after a while. Will just drying them well do the trick? I’m going to sugar blueberries for atop a cake this weekend to hopefully lock in the juice even more.
Blueberries seem to hold up pretty well. They don’t tend to bleed the way strawberries do. Hope your cake turned out well!
What a horrible recipe!!!! Wasted ingedients!!!!!
These turned out perfectly – I didn’t use lemon zest, but I have some orange blossom water and I used of a smidge of that as a replacement. No variations needed. If you mess this up, you probably suck at baking.
I made this cupcake this past weekend. My family loved it. The guests took cupcakes home. Because I couldn’t find cake flour at the store, I substituted all purpose flour. Note that it’s not 1:1 substitution. Google it. I had extra batter I used for mini cupcakes, super cute. I made the mistake of adding only 2 blueberries in a batch instead of 3 or 4. I suggest making sure the liner is filled only 2/3 of the way including the added blueberries. I’ll be making this cupcake again. Thanks for the recipe!
It’s always a good sign when the guest take extra cupcakes home! Thanks for the feedback Hope!
Hi! I am excited to try these. I am making them for a baby shower. I was wondering if you could substitute 1 or 2 cups of sour cream for the milk? And, could you add the juice of the lemon to the batter to make it more lemony? Thanks!
Jane
The frosting is pretty lemony – which I personally liked paired with subtle lemon notes from the lemon zest in the cupcake. It’s fresh and tangy but not too sour.
The frosting did not work at all and I followed the recipe exactly. More like a glaze consistency, too thin, and I didn’t have extra cream cheese to thicken it up so now I have to present ugly cupcakes to someone on their birthday. I’ve never had this happen with frosting not before. Very very disappointed.
Sorry to hear you had trouble with the recipe Jen. Let’s figure out what went wrong. There’s two possible culprits that come to mind:
First being that your butter and cream cheese were too warm. Pop the whole batch of icing in the refrigerator and it will firm up as it gets cold.
Or the amount of juice that came from your lemon was much more than mine. If this is the case, you can add additional powdered sugar to the batch, blend again, and it will thicken up nicely.
Hope one of these two solutions works for you!
Can you please tell us the general substitution of egg in all the recipes for baking
Here is a good article with 5 egg substitutes for baking. Please note, we have not tested this recipe with anything other than eggs.
https://www.thekitchn.com/5-vegan-substitutes-for-eggs-in-baking-tips-from-the-kitchn-136591
I made today. Maybe my blueberries were too large, since even though floured (something I always do) they sank to the bottom. Or perhaps next time I may just use regular flour to see if it helps. Otherwise, tasty!
I tried to half this recipe and it definitely did not work, but that’s my fault. I ended up with airy cupcakes that sunk in the middle. So if you’re planning on doing that, let me save you the trouble, don’t lol.
However. The taste was out of this world delicious. I will DEFINITELY be redoing these babies properly, even if i have to eat all 30 by myself LOL.
Thank you for the recipe, Carrie! 🙂
In the directions, you say to sift the baking soda in with the other dry ingredients, but you don’t list an amount. How much should we put in? These look amazing, and I can’t wait to try them!
No baking soda needed – the recipe has been updated accordingly. Hope you enjoy!
Any suggestions on how to make these gluten free?
I’d like to say it’s as easy as substituting your favorite gluten free flour for the cake flour, although I rarely find that to be true when trying my favorite recipes as gluten free. It often takes a little more tweaking and unfortunately, I have not experimented with this recipe.
You’d also want to use a GF vanilla extract and a GF baking powder.
Quick question ! Can I make these a day in advance ? I’m planning to make these for my daughter’s graduation party but wanted to make them ahead , please advise ! Thank you
Absolutely! Just be sure to store them in the refrigerator. Enjoy!
How many cupcakes does one recipe make? Thanks so much!! These are beautiful!!
This recipe makes 30 cupcakes. Enjoy Kelly!
Looks terrific! Cannot wait to make them. I like to print out a hard copy on which to make notes. I have used up a good chunk of paper trying to print this recipe using the plus/more – then print – button that resides under the recipe. This seems to print the entire page – including photos and every comments. Any recommendation as to how to print out just this recipe, without photos?
Sorry Jennifer. Right now, we do not have a print recipe feature in place.
The best way to print just the recipe is to use your print preview option and select just the pages with the recipe, excluding the writeup and ads.
In previous comments, you’ve mentioned the icing can be chilled…can it be chilled longer than 30 minutes, perhaps overnight or 3-4 hours before serving?
Absolutely Mayra. The icing itself can be stored in the refrigerator for several days. Just give it a light whip with the mixer again before trying to frost the cupcakes. Once the cupcakes are assembled, they will keep in the refrigerator for a day or two.
Hello! I can’t wait to try these for my boyfriends birthday, but I have a question… I don’t have a stand mixer. Can I use a regular hand held one?
These are lovely cupcakes! When I made them, though, some came out perfectly smooth and beautiful on top, and some seems to be wet looking with little holes ( The size of the crumb, just sank into the tiny air pockets on the top). Have you ever encountered this with this or any other cupcake recipe? I wondered if it was from letting the batter sit while the first batch cooked in the oven, because I could not fit them all at once. Advice appreciated!
If i want to keep these for a family of four, how should i store them? BTW the cupcakes turned out A-mazing! Myself and my husband are floored!! Delicious! I have them open on a baking sheet in the fridge. I was thinking of putting them in a container sealed shut on the counter? Any suggestions?