Berry Cupcakes with Berry Frosting

Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake papers in your cupcake pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, add in the butter, vegetable oil and granulated sugar. Mix until incorporated.
3. Add in the vanilla and the eggs one at a time. Mix until each egg is thoroughly incorporated before added the next.
4. Measure out the buttermilk and set aside.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine all the dry ingredients.
6. Begin alternately adding the dry ingredients and buttermilk starting and ending with flour. I added 4 additions of flour and 3 additions of buttermilk. Mix after each addition and scrape the sides of the bowl. The batter will be thick. It will help prevent the berries from sinking to the bottom of the cupcakes.
7. Add in the blackberries and raspberries and stir in with a spatula.
8. Scoop the batter with a medium cookie scoop. Fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 full.
9. Place in the 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 and bake for an additional 16 to 17 minutes until the toothpick comes out clean or with moist crumbs.
10. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Frosting

1. In a saucepan, add in the berries. Turn the heat to medium and let cook for about 20 minutes until the berries are broken down and the juices cook down slightly.
2. Strain the berry juice with a fine mesh strainer and discard all the seeds. Be sure to get as much of the pulp as possible before discarding. Let cool slightly.
3. Add in the butter, lemon extract and powdered sugar. Mix on low until the powdered sugar is almost completely incorporated. Turn the mixer on high and whip the frosting 1 – 2 minutes more. The frosting will be slightly loose and sticky. You can add an additional 1 cup of powdered sugar to stiffen it up, but I didn’t want to lose my sweet and tart flavor so I went with less.
4. with a round tip in a piping bag, pipe a cloud of frosting on top of each cupcake. Since the frosting is slightly sticky, give the tip a swirl to break the frosting off.

Topper

1. In a double boiler, heat up the black candy melts.
2. Place the melted candy melts in a piping cone and cut a very tiny hole.
3. Place a piece of wax paper over a mocking jay template. I found mine here and resized it to 150 pixels.
4. Carefully pipe over the lines. Use a toothpick to fix any mistakes and get sharp edges.
5. Let dry and use an offset spatula to peel off the wax paper. Place on cupcakes.