Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

It isn't quite strawberry season in Ohio, but the strawberries are on a buy one get one free sale. That means I can make lots of delicious strawberry desserts! My immediate thought when I saw this sale was to make strawberry shortcake cupcakes. So I did. And I'm very glad that I did. Doesn't it look delicious? It is very much.

I baked yellow cake from scratch for these cupcakes. I'm not sure that I like the recipe, but it goes well with the strawberries and fluffy white frosting. I may have overbeat the eggs into the batter because the cake fell a bit after baking. Instead of using whipped cream, I used a fluffy white frosting because I can't have too much dairy without getting sick. This frosting makes a good substitute for whipped cream; it isn't too sweet and is very, very fluffy.

Yellow Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1/2 C shortening

1/2 C butter, softened

2 C sugar

4 eggs

2 2/3 C sifted cake flour

2 1/2 t baking powder

1 C milk

1 1/2 t vanilla

Sift together the sifted-before-measured cake flour and baking powder. Set aside.

Cream together the shortening, butter, and sugar until well blended and kind of fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat until fluffy.

Alternate mixing in the flour mixture and the milk. The additions should be: flour, milk, flour, milk, flour. Be sure to mix well between each addition and after the final.

Scoop the batter into paper lined muffin cups. Fill the cups 2/3 full with batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, slice your strawberries and make the fluffy white frosting. The recipe is from allrecipes.com.

Fluffy White Frosting (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1 C sugar

1/3 c water

1/4 t cream of tartar

2 egg whites

1 t vanilla extract

In a small sauce pan, combine the sugar, water, and cream of tartar. Warm over medium heat while stirring occasionally. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves and the mixture starts to bubble.

Meanwhile, beat together the egg whites and vanilla until soft peaks form.

With the mixer on a medium speed, slowly pour the melted sugar mixture into the egg whites. Beat together for 8 minutes or until stiff peaks form. The frosting will be nice and cool by the time it reaches the stiff peak stage.

Assembling

Now you get to assemble the strawberry shortcakes. Excited? You should be! 

First, take a cupcake, peel the liner away from the sides, and set it on a plate.

Next, take a sharp knife and cut the cupcake horizontally into two pieces.

Place some of the frosting on top of the bottom half of the cupcake. Next place some strawberries on top of the fluffy frosting.

Replace the top half of the cupcake. Repeat the frosting and strawberry steps. You can even pretend you are able to make flowers out of the strawberry slices like I did.

Now eat a ton of these because they are delicious.

Enjoy!

Cocoa Pink Cuplets

I've never heard of cupcakes referred to as "cuplets" before. But I've also never considered cocoa to be pink. My cuplets did not turn out pink. I used the Hershey's Special Dark cocoa instead of normal cocoa, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I'm also beginning to really enjoy all of this homemade cake. I may never make cake from a box again!

The chocolate flavor of the cuplets is light, even though I used dark cocoa, and the chocolate chips on top compliment the flavor very well. If you want a cupcake that has more of a rich flavor, you can probably try adding a bit more cocoa. Or you can just frost them with a chocolate frosting or ganache!

Cocoa Pink Cuplets (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 C flour
1 T cocoa
1 t salt
1 1/4 C sugar
3/4 C shortening
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 C cold water
1 t baking soda
1 C chocolate chips
1/2 C chopped nuts (optional)

Take the flour, cocoa, and salt and sift them together twice. Set this flour mixture aside.

In a mixer on a medium low speed, cream together the sugar and shortening.

Add the eggs and mix well on low speed. Add the vanilla at some point during this mixing process. I suggest scraping the sides of the bowl at least once.

Add the baking soda to the cold water and stir until the soda is dissolved.

With the mixer on low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the water mixture. I did 3 additions of flour and 2 additions of water. Be sure to start and end with an addition of flour and to mix well between each addition. The batter will be very nice and fluffy when you are done!

Fill baking cups half full with the batter. Put some of the chocolate chips and optional nuts on top of each blob of batter. This recipe will make 20-24 cupcakes, so don't worry if you don't have enough batter for 24 cuplets. I only made 22.

Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. Be sure to check at 20 minutes to see if they are done. Check this by stabbing a cuplet with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, they are done! If it comes out messy, you just killed a cuplet. You should be ashamed of yourself. Now continue to bake them for a few more minutes.

With the chocolate chips on top (and the optional nuts), I didn't see a need to add frosting to these cuplets. If you did, let me know how it turned out.

Enjoy!

4th of July Cupcakes

I usually don't spend a lot of time making cupcakes look pretty. Cupcakes seem to have a special standing in the world of desserts; no matter how they look, people will eat them without hesitation. They are essentially just a lazy way to eat cake (no cutting, forks, or plates involved!). However, there are certain times when a cupcake just looks boring without decoration. The 4th of July is one of those times. Most desserts served on that day, at BBQs or family get-togethers, tend to have a red, white, and blue theme.

I've wanted to make more layered cupcakes like the ones I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower, but I haven't had a reason to. For anything related to cake decorating, I need motivation to stay focused on the task. With the 4th of July coming up, red, white, and blue layered cupcakes are perfect.

What you need:
Prepared white cake mix
Red and blue food coloring and toothpicks
Small mixing bowls
Spoons
Cupcake pan & liners
Batch of frosting
(Optional) Frosting bag and size 20 star tip

I found these amazingly cute cupcake liners at the grocery store. Reynolds now makes "party" cupcake liners that come in a variety of colors and patterns. I couldn't pass up buying these plaid ones. They cost the same as the standard colors, so I recommend using a fun design!

After admiring the awesome cupcake liners, place one into each spot in the cupcake pan.

After preparing your cake mix, evenly divide it into three mixing bowls. Using the food coloring, tint one bowl of batter red and another bowl of batter blue. The other bowl of batter will remain white, but stir the batter for 30 seconds with a spoon to give it the same consistency as the tinted batter.

Using spoons (I used soup spoons), layer the batter into the cupcake liners. The bottom layer will be red, the middle will be white, and the top layer will be blue. Each layer only requires a spoonful of batter which you will need to gently spread out. The cupcake liners will probably be filled more than the recommended amount, but they won't overflow while baking. This results in few cupcakes being made from one box mix (I ended up with 20 cupcakes).

Bake the cupcakes according to the box directions. With white cake, I use the lower number in the time range recommended. This prevents the white cake from drying out. Place the baked cupcakes on a cooling rack to cool.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make a batch of your favorite frosting. If using white frosting, it can be tinted red, white, and blue to match the cupcakes. To do this, evenly divide the frosting up into three small mixing bowls. Tint one bowl of frosting red and another bowl blue.

One method of frosting with tri-colored frosting is to use a decorating bag and a star tip. I used a 10 inch featherweight reusable bag and a size 20 star tip. Filling the bag is tricky and messy. There may be a better way to go about doing this, but I haven't figure one out yet.

Hold the bag open with one hand and use a frosting spatula or knife to scoop frosting into the bag one color at a time. Don't worry about the colors mixing while filling the bag; the colors will mix while coming out anyway.

Once the bag is filled, twist the top closed and frost your cupcakes. It is easiest to start at the outer edge and circle around to the middle.

When all the cupcakes are frosted, it is recommended that you cut a cupcake in half. This is mainly so you can see the layers more clearly and have an excuse to eat a cupcake before anyone else.

Blue blue blue

I was supposed to make a cake for a baby shower this past weekend. That didn't happen for various reasons. I had to make cupcakes instead. I didn't want the cupcakes to be boring white cupcakes, however. The baby is a boy, so I made blue cupcakes. Not simple blue cupcakes.

The frosting was 3 different blues. Light blue, medium blue, and teal. You can't really see the light blue in this picture, but I'm not lying... there was light blue. To make the frosting swirly like this, I had to put the three different blues into the same frosting bag side by side. It wasn't very easy. I had to wash the bag between each filling. If I do this again, I'll have to get a larger frosting bag!

So, that's pretty. A nice blue cupcake. That wasn't good enough for me. This is what the inside looked like:

Three different shades of blue; the same shades as the frosting. The bottom is light blue, the middle is teal, and the top is medium blue. I colored the frosting & cake batter using the gel Wilton icing colors (the liquid colors may have watered down the batter too much... didn't want to risk that). Mixing the cake mix so much to add the color condensed the white cake batter so much that 2 box mixes made barely 36 cupcakes instead of 48. This made the cupcake texture very creamy. It was amazing :)

I plan on making other cupcakes like this. I'd love to do a Neapolitan cupcake with vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavored cake batter. Mmm...