Strawberry Cupcakes

It's Annelise's first birthday is this weekend and the invitation specifically said "no gifts please" but it didn't say anything about cupcakes :) so here goes...

All prepped and ready to go! woot woot....

I wanted to make strawberry cupcakes so in keeping with the pink theme for the little one's birthday but I needed to find a way to not increase the liquid too much otherwise it would mess up my cook time. So lo and behold I found these rad dehydrated strawberries at Whole Foods to smash up and mix into the batter and frosting. They were perfectly tangy so as to not add too much sweetness to what was already an inordinate amount of powdered and granulated sugar used in the confection.

All packed up and ready to be delivered to the birthday girl. What's great is that you can take a standard yellow cake recipe that you like and play around with the liquid and flavoring portion to make different cakes. For example you can substitute juice for milk and use different extracts besides vanilla to adjust the flavors. In this instance, I just added about 1 cup of powdered dehydrated strawberries to both the batter and the frosting.


Recipe

3/4 cups self-rising flour
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup powdered dehydrated strawberries (crush with a meat tenderizer in a bag)

Strawberry Frosting
1 sticks butter
1 Tablespoons Vanilla
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
1/8 cup cream
1 cup powdered dehydrated strawberries (crush with a meat tenderizer in a bag)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line one 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers.

In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Put softened butter, vanilla, cream and powdered sugar and strawberries into a mixer and blend on slow until incorporated...then whip on medium to high speed for 5-6 minutes until light and fluffy.