Strawberry Cupcakes

We woke up this morning to pouring down rain and it just felt like a good day to fire up the oven and do a little baking. On my list of things to make today are the Strawberry cupcakes from cupcake class last weekend, banana bread, and taco meat (I like to have it on hand for a quick grab during the week).

The strawberry cupcakes are pretty easy recipe to put together. Butter, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, flour, baking powder, salt, and strawberries of course. I prepped everything beforehand so that I could just follow the directions and dump things in the bowl when it was time. I also opted to make mini-cupcakes so that I would have some for Curt and I both to take to work, as well as for me to take along with the dinner I’m making for a friend.

Here are the cupcakes ready to go into the oven. Check out all of those bits of chopped strawberries.

And here there are having just come out of the oven. I found myself wanting them to be browner/toastier on top. But I didn’t want to risk them getting too dried out. And they came out perfect, if I do say so myself.

Once they were cooled off, it was time to make the frosting. It starts as a bit of a meringue. To which you then add an insane amount of butter (I’ll refrain from telling you how much), and then a strawberry puree.

I decided it was a good opportunity to practice some piping (which I am horrible at). Hence why you see the finished frosting in a large ziploc bag. I will say, that this was the first time I actually felt somewhat comfortable piping out of a ziploc. The end result wasn’t overly pretty, but they were passable. Here is the last tin all piped out.

Funny story – well, maybe not so much. But as I was piping this last tin, my back was to the other two. When I hear a funny noise behind me. I turned around to find our cat, Casper (the diabetic one) up on the counter licking the frosting off one of the cupcakes. Seriously? Before being diagnosed with diabetes, she would have never been so bold. But now, she is incorrigible. She has this new-found six sense about knowing when we’re eating anything remotely sweet or carby. And she will get right up in your face wanting some.

Anyways, that is a snapshot of this morning. I need to go find where I can stash 72 cupcakes so that Casper won't find them. Have a good one!