I crave blueberries every spring, as I make a point of not buying the ones flown across half the world or extortionately expensive ones produced by ‘kill the planet’ greenhouse methods. Blueberries are not as sensitive to sunshine and locality as strawberries are, so we get them from all over Europe when the time comes – but not any sooner. Things taste much nicer when you’ve not had them for a while – absence makes the taste buds fonder.
And here is another variation on the blueberry baking theme – I can never get enough. But are these cupcakes? I’m not so sure. Where’s the buttercream?
The recipe, which I tweaked slightly, comes from NY Times Cooking where it was labelled ‘muffins’. But you can’t really call them that either.
Muffins are rough and ready, wet-into-dry and don’t overmix. Cupcakes have dainty buttercream frosting. Muffcakes? Cupkins? I don’t really like those neo-foods as much as I adore Humpty Dumpty.
If it was one large confection, it would most certainly be called cake. Cakelets?
Whatever you call these, and I decided in the end to rechristen them ‘cupcakes’, they are damn nice. Bake with or without paper cases; in latter case butter the tin thoroughly.