This 4th of July I made berry cupcakes based on Martha Stewart’s recipe.  I topped them off with fresh strawberry slices.  These reminded me of simple blueberry muffins, but with a creamy marshmallow-like frosting.

I also wanted to capture the statue of liberty in cupcake form, which lead to making lemon meringue cupcakes from scratch to resemble the torch.  I loosely based these on another Martha Stewart recipe, though I modified it slightly based on some other tasty looking recipes I found.  The cupcakes were filled with lemon curd, topped with a swirl of delicious meringue, then toasted lightly with my new kitchen toy.  I wrapped them in a paper crown decoration; although they looked a little cheesy, they tasted amazing!

Honestly, though, I just made these cupcakes to have an excuse to use another Bed Bath and Beyond 20% off coupon on a torch!