My vanilla cupcake with fresh strawberry frosting. Yay spring!
Cheap strawberries are everywhere in Northern California right now, signaling that spring is here. With Memorial Day barbecues just around the corner, I wanted to create a cupcake that would celebrate the delicious flavor of a fresh strawberry, and this is what I came up with: a light vanilla cupcake and a fresh strawberry frosting, both inspired by Cheryl at Cupcake Bakeshop, my favorite cupcake blogger.
This cupcake may look tame, but don’t be fooled. The light vanilla cupcake perfectly supports a strawberry frosting that smacks you across the face with fresh strawberry flavor first and asks questions later. And frankly, that’s the way I like my frosting. Light and bitchy.
I used this vanilla cupcake recipe for my base, and it’s a great basic and light vanilla cupcake. It supported the strawberry frosting perfectly without taking any attention away from it.
My vanilla cupcakes, pre- and post-baking.
From there, I made the frosting, which is a cream cheese-powdered sugar frosting that is VERY light on the cream cheese. I like to use this frosting when I want to highlight a specific flavor that might be too sweet in a regular powdered sugar frosting. The light use of cream cheese gives a tangy, background flavor that lightens flavors light salted caramel and strawberry. This is trick I totally stole from Cheryl at Cupcake Bakeshop, btw. The lady is a genius.
Creaming the butter and the cream cheese together.
This is after I added the powdered sugar to the cream cheese and butter.
Cheryl did a similar frosting, but when it came to strawberries, she used strawberry puree and found it yielded a loose frosting. So I decided to used strawberries I mashed with a fork instead, getting some puree and chunks of berry into the frosting.
My mashed strawberries for the frosting.
After adding the strawberry mash, the frosting takes on a beautiful pink color that is studded with bits of bright red strawberry.
The frosting was still a bit loose because there was a bit of liquid in the mash, but the flavor was spot on. I just made sure to store the cupcakes in the fridge, and the frosting held up well.
The finished fresh strawberry frosting.
The finished cupcakes.
A forest of cupcakes.
Too much frosting? NEVER.
Recipe: Leena’s Strawberry Frosting
Summary: Inspired by a recipe at Cupcake Bakeshop blog
Ingredients
- 1/4 stick of butter (1 ounce or 2 tablespoons), room temperature
- 2 oz of cream cheese (1/4 package), room temperature
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup mashed strawberries
Instructions
- Cream the butter and cream cheese together in a stand mixer. When they are light and fluffy, add in two cups of powdered sugar, and beat until light and fluffy.
- Add in the mashed strawberries and beat until fully mixed in.
- Add in the remaining powdered sugar and beat until fluffy. Refrigerate for one hour and then use to ice cupcakes. Ices one dozen cupcakes.
Microformatting by hRecipe.
~LTG!
