Cupcake Cousins

"Too many cooks spoil the broth."  Perhaps that's true where broth is involved, but more than one cook can work very nicely especially if they are two creative cousins collaborating on cupcakes.

After a search for a cupcake recipe and a discussion about artificial colouring not being the best thing to use for icing, my youngest daughter and her cousin came up with the idea of making lemon cupcakes with blueberry frosting.  They decided to use fresh blueberries to colour and flavour their icing.  Like two mad scientists, they laboured over their experimental bowl of icing--blending the juice from squashed blueberries with icing sugar, butter, lemon rind, lemon juice and then adding more icing sugar to thicken their mixture.  In the end, what they had was more of a glaze than icing but what a glorious glaze it was.  To build on their berry theme, they decided to decorate the cupcakes with bits of fresh strawberries.

The result?  Beautiful and delicious lemon berry cupcakes that could have been served with pride at the very nicest restaurant.  Cousins baking together in the cottage kitchen?  A very good idea indeed.