Berries and Cream Cupcakes – mixed berry buttercream paired with a moist vanilla cupcake stuffed with whipped cream cheese filling, topped with fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. A new cupcake recipe by our contributor, Lindsay Conchar.
Berries have always been my favorite of the fruits. Strawberries, in particular. I remember back in college, my husband (then boyfriend) and I would always look forward to visiting his family on the coast of North Carolina in May. School was out for the summer and we knew all the strawberry patches around them were ripe for the picking! We’d go and get several cartons – both to eat and to take back to my family in Charlotte. Some of the best strawberries!
Now living in Georgia, I’ve been told there are some really great blueberry farms around where you can go pick them and we’ve never done it. I think it’s about time we fix that! I know freshly picked strawberries are extra tasty, so I’d imagine blueberries would be the same.
These cupcakes contain the flavor of both blueberries and strawberries, along with raspberries. My favorite triple berry combo! To achieve the berry flavor in the frosting without thinning it out too much with a bunch of berry puree, I used a freeze dried berry mix. It worked like a charm! I got mine at Target, but they can often be found at grocery stores too. You don’t need a lot. Less than 1 oz is plenty to get a full cup of the berries to grind into a powder. The cup of berries gave me about ¼ cup of powder, which was the perfect amount for the frosting.
The cupcake that the frosting sits on is a moist and super easy vanilla cupcake. You really don’t even have to pull out your mixer if you don’t want to – they’re that easy to make. The batter is pretty thin, so don’t be alarmed and think you did something wrong. They bake up nice, fluffy and super moist.
A delicious whipped filling sits inside the center of the cupcake. It’s made by first whipping up some whipped cream that’s flavored with a little almond extract. A little bit of cream cheese is added part-way through whipping the cream to give a little extra flavor. It’s so light and creamy, and is perfect as the filling.
The combination of soft, moist cupcake with the whipped almond cream filling and the berry frosting on top is so good it’s almost unfair. I shared these with some of my usual taste testers and several people declared them a new favorite. I have to say I agree. And they’re perfect for summer!
Berries and Cream Cupcakes
Berries and Cream Cupcakes – mixed berry buttercream paired with a moist vanilla cupcake stuffed with whipped cream cheese filling, topped with fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.
- Yield: 12-14 cupcakes
- Category: ✽ ✽ ✽
Ingredients
For the Vanilla Cupcakes:
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup hot water
For the Berry Frosting:
- 1 cup freeze-dried mixed berries
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 3–4 tablespoons water or milk
- Pinch of salt
- Fresh berries, for topping
For the Cream Filling:
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream, cold
- ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
- ¾ teaspoon almond extract
- 3 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
Instructions
Make the Cupcakes:
- Preheat oven to 350°F (176°C) and prepare a cupcake pan with liners.
- Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to a large mixer bowl and combine. Set aside.
- Add the milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and eggs to a medium sized bowl and combine.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat until well combined.
- Slowly add the hot water to the batter and mix on low speed until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to make sure everything is well combined.
- Fill the cupcake liners about half way and bake for 15-17 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
- Remove the cupcakes from oven and allow to cool for 2 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
Make the Berry Frosting:
- Add the freeze dried berries to a food processor and grind into a powder. Set aside.
- Add the butter to a large mixer bowl and mix until smooth.
- Add about half of the powdered sugar and mix until smooth
- Add up to 3 tablespoons of water or milk and the salt and mix until smooth.
- Add the remaining powdered sugar and powdered berries and mix until well combined and smooth. Add additional water or milk, as needed. Set aside.
Make the Cream Filling:
- Add the heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar and almond extract to a large mixer bowl and whip on high speed until soft peaks begin to form.
- Add the cream cheese and continue whipping until stiff peaks form.
Assemble the Cupcakes:
- Use a cupcake corer or knife to remove the center of the cupcakes. Fill the centers with the cream filling.
- Pipe the berry frosting on top of the cupcakes using a closed star piping tip like this one
- Finish off the cupcakes with additional fresh berries. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
10 Fresh Berry Layer Cakes
Eaton Mess Cake with Mixed Berries
Strawberry Thyme Cake
Strawberry Swirl Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Lemon Blueberry Cake
Love all your recipes. Thank you! Question, what brand of freeze dried berries do you use. Is freeze dried different then frozen?
Lindsay used the Simply Balanced Mixed Berry Blend from Target. Freeze dried fruit has all of the moisture removed, so it is different than frozen. Hope that helps!
These cupcakes are so pretty, and that frosting looks awesome!!
Made these cupcakes yesterday and was soooo unimpressed with the cake and texture 🙁 It was super gummy and lacking flavor.
I’ve never made a cupcake with so little fat before (I even used full fat milk) – is there any chance there’s an ingredient (butter) missing?
I agree i made them twice because i thought i did something wrong i the first batch but the second is pretty much the same. Im so confused.
OMG These sound amazing! I love the idea of using freeze dried berries.
I like this combination: dry fruit with cupcake. It seems yummy….. I love it.
Not happy with the way these turned out :/. The cupcakes were strangely chewy and the uncooked mixture was very soupy. The frosting was too sweet, I think it could use about half the sugar that the recipe suggests, but still didn’t hold it’s shape well. Even when they were golden in the oven they remained sticky, and undercooked on the inside, and also hardly rose at all. Please note that I followed the recipe to the tee.
Overall, I really liked these. They came together fairly easily, and the icing was fantastic. The cupcakes themselves did not have a lot of flavor, and the texture was a bit strange–not sure I’ll be using that part of the recipe again. On the whole, though, very tasty!
Beatifuly cupcakes. OK!
Happy new year 2018 !
Feluz ano nuevo 2018!
Just needed a filling recipe. I thought this would be good because of the heavy cream. The cream cheese WAS at room temperature and when I tried to mix it is the cream broke down before the lumps of the cream cheese broke up. Un acceptable. Sorry.😢
the cake was good but the frosting would not hold its shape and they looked ugly 🙁 they were supposed to be for my sisters baby shower, but they ain’t going anywhere. “:(
I have made this recipe before and loved it. I want to make it again but I want to make A LOT of it at a time. Do I need to use a kitchenaid or electric mixer or can I just mix it by hand with a whisk?
Would not recommend any part of this recipe. The cupcakes stick to the paper something terrible, the frosting has a terrible taste and consistency, and the cream on the inside had a terrible consistency as well. Very upset that I wasted time and ingredients on this terrible recipe.
Lovely i love this combination
Yikes was going to make but such terrible reviews I think I’ll find different recipe to try.
I haven’t tired this yet but I’m baking them for a show that I’m doing on Saturday and Sunday! Will let you know how everyone liked them
Ok so I just made these and everyone LOVES them! I had to add a smidge more flower and I used fresh berries instead of freeze dried because that’s what I had. They turned out great, the texture of the cake is good and over all I will likely make them again 🙂
I thought these were great idea for my daughters 2nd birthday. Which is going to be in two months. So I thought I do a trial run first. She doesn’t have very big sweet tooth. So I found a different cupcake recipe but I did try the recipe for this frosting. The freeze dried fruit was horrible as far as taste. Both my daughters and myself tried it before turning it into a powdered. I cut the recipe in half for the frosting, and divided it. I tried it with the freeze dried and with fresh fruit. Freeze dried awful taste. Neither my girls liked it. As I said before, one has a very sweet tooth and one not so much. Then I tried it with the fresh fruit and it just made it very runny. I added some whipping cream to try to peak it up but it was still to runny. Really bummed. Anybody else has any tips on how to get a berry frosting that will work for cupcakes. Plz let me know
Didn’t even try the frosting, made the cupcakes and they came out terrible! Big big holes in the cakes on the bottom and even though I cooked them longer than it said, they still came out under. They didn’t rise at all and tasted very bland. I wouldn’t suggest trying this recipe! (Also my boyfriend is a baker and I tried to make these on my own, should have listen to his warnings that the recipe seemed wrong)
Ok this is the second recipe I tried and it was a bit off. One thing I can say is that follow the cake batter recipe to the tea and you should be fine. The only change needed is time. At first sight I thought 17 minutes was too little time for this cake so I timed it at 23 minutes. It came out perfect it’s not a golden color. It will come out pale. As for the frosting I would give that a 1 it turned out horrible. Well let me say that i didnt see the part where the frozen berries should have been “dried frozen berries”. I used the honey cream cheese frosting i had left over from a cake i made a fee months back. Thank God. I decided to use sour cream, powder sugar and a bit of left over frozen berries and drizzled that over the cupcakes. Unfortunately I made this for work and forgot to take photos of the finish product. Everyone loved it.
Note: thoes of you who are saying your cake came out yummy its probably because it’s not baked long enough 23 to 27 minutes.
I’ve never seen so many negative comments on a recipe before—wow!! I have made this recipe several times and the result is always wonderful. The cupcakes are light and fluffy, the filling is rich, and everyone raves about the buttercream. I think some of you need to try it again!!
I baked these just as the recipe said to and they came out great. I did not have mixed berry freeze dried fruit in my pantry so I had to get some. My local market only carried strawberry and bananas so I tried it with these. The flavor of the frosting is incredible and deliciously sweet. The cupcake itself was a bit sponge-like, but the cream cheese filling compensated perfectly. I will be making these again, and my sister will get these for her birthday tomorrow and love them!