Strawberries And Cream Cupcakes

I’m “Crushin’ ” on these Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes big time. Last weekend I wanted to create my own strawberries and cream cupcake from my base scratch cupcake recipe.  Needless to say I ended up throwing that batch out. Today I went back to the test kitchen and did a few things differently.

Here in South Florida it’s Strawberry Season for us until the end of February. What better time for strawberry season than right before Valentines Day.  Perfect reason to try these.

When I tried these last weekend I baked the strawberries inside. I pureed them in a blender with some heavy whipping cream and it made the cupcakes too sweet.

Looks pretty but didn’t taste so great. The strawberries disintergrated inside the cupcake when baked and they came out purple! How I wish I’d taken a photograph of that, but I was embarrassed to show anyone.

This time I decided to just add the strawberries so as not to change the properties too much and keep a moisture in the cupcake.

I initially didn’t want to look at other recipes online, but I needed something besides strawberry extract to kick it up a notch and give it a more natural taste. I ran across a video on Youtube on Betty Crocker that used strawberry soda. I thought that was genius and would lighten up some of the sweetness in my cupcake.  I may try it again with Nestle Quick strawberry milk next time just to see if it changes much. You could probably also use a strawberry gelatin.  Sure, now as I’m writing this I come up with all the others.

Cue your ingredients…

The real test was giving them to my boyfriend to try.  I asked him to honestly rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, obviously 10 being AWESOME! He gave them an honest (hopefully) 7/10.  I’ll take it!  I’m constantly trying to make my cupcakes taste better that is the fun of baking right? So I’m sure I’ll be trying to improve upon that number.

But for today. I’m satisfied. Happy Sunday everyone.

Recipe Type: Dessert

Author: Sherri @ The Kitchen Prescription (dot) com

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 12

Strawberries and cream cupcakes. Dreamy

Ingredients

• CUPCAKE INGREDIENTS:
• 5 tablespoons salted butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoon light sour cream
• 2 teaspoons strawberry extract (mine was alcohol free)
• 1 egg room temperature
• 1 cup strawberry soda
• 12-16 large strawberries washed dried and hulled and sliced in small bowl
• FROSTING INGREDIENTS:
• 6 tablespoons crisco shortening
• 3 tablespoons salted butter room temperature
• 3-4 cups confectioners sugar
• 4 tablespoons strawberry ice cream syrup
• 2 tablespoons strawberry soda
• 1 1/2 tablespoon strawberry ice cream syrup

Instructions

1. CUPCAKE INSTRUCTIONS:
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
3. line 12 cupcake liners in muffin/cupcake pan
4. cream butter and sugar on medium speed with stand mixer or hand mixer
5. add dry ingredients to butter and sugar mixture
6. add wet ingredients to mixture
7. mix until all lumps are out
8. use ice cream scoop and fill liner 2/3 full
9. place in oven and bake until toothpick come out clean or they spring back to touch
10. cool
11. CUPCAKE FILLING:
12. while cupcakes are cooling cut strawberries into small pieces and add strawberry ice cream syrup. Mix well with spoon set aside
13. when cupcakes have cooled core them out and add a teaspoon of strawberry filling
14. replace top of cupcake (don’t worry if not neat, it gets covered with frosting)
15. FROSTING:
16. cream together shortening, butter, and syrup
17. add confectioners sugar
18. add strawberry soda
19. mix well on low speed and gradually increase speed until all lumps are out