Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Late spring and early summer is one of my favorite times of year. Not only is the weather turning nicer, the flowers and trees are in bloom, and we’re starting to spend more time outside, but strawberries are in season! I actually used to not like strawberries. My sister B always loved them. I remember thinking she was really weird when we were young cause I couldn’t stand strawberries. It was one of those things I grew out of though and thank goodness I did!

Obviously, strawberries are delicious on their own, or in strawberry shortcake, but I wanted to bake with them too. If you remember my Top Ten list from last June… I haven’t made a whole lot of progress on it in the last year, but I immediately remembered this fresh strawberry cake on the list.

I had a hard time figuring out how many cupcakes the recipe would make. You see, the original recipe is for a two-layer 4.5″ cake. So I did some number crunching and calculated the volume of a 4.5″ cake pan and how many cups of batter that would hold and so on. I figured that one batch would make ~9 cupcakes. Yea,… I forgot to factor in the fact that you don’t fill a cake pan to the TOP before you bake it. At any rate, I tripled the recipe because I wanted around 2 dozen. I got 12 cupcakes. And one was a bit on the skimpy side. Oh well, live and learn.

These were a huge hit when Hubby took them to work. I did add the 5 drops of red food coloring so the color of the cupcakes wouldn’t be a weird beige color. I love that the recipe uses fresh strawberries and I kicked it up a notch by spooning in even more fresh strawberries after they baked. You can see that I got a bit impatient and frosted these before the cupcakes were completely cooled.

One Year Ago: Roasted Red Pepper Dip

Strawberry Cupcakes

Yield: 12

Ingredients:

For the Cupcakes
3 T buttermilk
6 T mashed strawberries
3/8 t baking soda
1 whole egg + yolk of 1 egg
1 1/2 t vanilla
9 T unsalted butter, melted & cooled
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 c sugar
1/4 tsp kosher salt
5 drops red food coloring (optional)

For the Frosting
8 oz cream cheese at room temp
1 stick butter at room temp
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3-4 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

For the Cupcakes
Preheat oven to 350 F.

Whisk the buttermilk, strawberries and baking soda together in a small bowl. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and melted butter, whisk to combine.

In a larger bowl stir together the flour, sugar & salt. Add the buttermilk/strawberry mixture & whisk until just blended. Stir in food coloring (if you leave this out, the cupcakes will be a weird beige color).

Divide the batter between the two pans. Bake for 20-25 min or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely.

I used some leftover cream cheese frosting I had in the fridge. A single batch will usually cover ~24 cupcakes, so you could cut that recipe in half

For the Frosting
Cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy.

Add vanilla extract. Slowly add powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached.

Assemble the cupcakes
Once cupcakes have cooled completely, use the cone method to cut a cone out of each cupcake. Fill the hole with more mushed up strawberries and replace the top. Frost with cream cheese frosting.

Recipe adapted from A Good Appetite

Cupcakes, Dessert

13 comments »

30 Responses to “Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake”

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1

CB — March 30, 2008 at 4:57 am

I love the idea of perfect party minicakes!! They look delish! Great job! That flour picture is so funny. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that – flour on the counter, on my KA, in my hair, on my face!
Clara @ I♥food4thought
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2

Nemmie — March 30, 2008 at 5:10 am

Yum! Love the raspberry/lemon combo, and the mini cakes are adorable 🙂
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3

Morven — March 30, 2008 at 11:36 am

Well done – what an innovative variation. They look so cute!
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4

Maryann — March 30, 2008 at 11:49 am

I can totally relate to the slippery effect.
Your cake looks beautiful!
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5

Sheltie Girl — March 30, 2008 at 12:09 pm

You did a lovely job on all your mini cakes.

Natalie @ Gluten A Go Go
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6

slush — March 30, 2008 at 1:23 pm

Adorable! Your KA and mine would be best friends. ‘Chuck’ is always filthy. Poor guy. He gets cleaned up, just to be coated again. 😉
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7

Ben — March 30, 2008 at 1:27 pm

How cute! Making mini-cakes is a great idea. Next time I make this cake I will try that, I still have a HUGE cake in the fridge I need to eat :-/

Cheers!
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8

~Amber~ — March 30, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Great idea on the mini cakes. They are really cute. Great job. To the next challenge we go.
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Carrie — March 30, 2008 at 3:21 pm

beautifully done!!! love it!!!
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10

Jerry — March 30, 2008 at 3:59 pm

I love the little cakes! Plus the raspberries! Yummy!
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11

L Vanel — March 30, 2008 at 4:20 pm

The mini cakes look really amazing!
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12

Allergy Mom — March 30, 2008 at 4:46 pm

The minicakes are wonderful! Now, you’ll need my address to send one…Libby 😉
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13

Butta Buns — March 30, 2008 at 5:23 pm

Love the idea of the mini cakes, that’s so adorable!
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14

Bridget — March 30, 2008 at 7:16 pm

Mini-cakes are definitely more work than one large cake! They’re so cute though.
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15

Nikki — March 30, 2008 at 7:43 pm

What a cute idea! They look adorable!
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16

Gail — March 30, 2008 at 7:51 pm

I love desserts in miniature and your mini cakes look beautiful. I think I will most definitely be making mini cakes sometime in the near future – thank you for the wonderful idea!

~gail
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17

Claire — March 30, 2008 at 9:04 pm

I’m loving the mini versions! The cake looks fantastic. Mmmmm!
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18

Peabody — March 30, 2008 at 9:32 pm

I made mini ones too. I hate to tell you but it is way easier to frost a whole cake than mini ones. 🙂
Looks great.
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19

Beth G. — March 30, 2008 at 9:52 pm

Beautiful!! You did a gorgeous job :O)
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20

Namratha — March 30, 2008 at 11:08 pm

These individual cakes look pretty…well done!
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21

Lesley — March 31, 2008 at 12:10 am

Really cute idea to make individual cakes, I love that. Great job!
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22

jasmine — March 31, 2008 at 12:58 am

I adore your minicakes. V lovely.

j
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23

leafy bombshell — March 31, 2008 at 2:23 am

Oh! the minicakes are just the best idea ever. I probably should have done that with my oh-so flat cakes. How great.
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24

Ritsumei — March 31, 2008 at 3:57 am

Mini cakes -what a great idea! I think I’m going to have to try that here pretty soon. Looks like a delicious lot of fun. Especially the part where you get to eat the scraps. I think this cake was some of the best I’ve had.
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25

ruthEbabes — March 31, 2008 at 2:15 pm

What cute little mini cakes! Aren’t things just better when they’re mini?

Great work!
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26

Gabi — March 31, 2008 at 4:00 pm

I love the little cakes and the picture with the raspberry and lemon zest is so enticing!
Perfect!
xoxo
Gabi
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27

Jenny — April 1, 2008 at 1:14 am

Another messy baker here! And I love the mini cakes – I’m nice to see its as low-tech as cutting circles out of larger pieces rather than trying to bake a bunch of cakes in miniature pans.
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28

creampuff — April 1, 2008 at 1:55 am

Jen,

Your little cakes are gorgeous! I too love swiss buttercream … congratulations on a job well done!
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29

JMom — April 1, 2008 at 9:12 pm

wow, that takes some patience, putting all those cakes together! They are just the cutest though. ~ JMom
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30

Big Boys Oven — April 2, 2008 at 8:54 am

so petite and cute!