Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes with Whipped Cream

While in the grocery, the BFF and I noticed strawberries on sale.  Hooray! Winter is over!  Well, at least it's over in California where something like 80% of the USA's annual strawberry crop is grown.   Of course, we had to buy some, and then wonder what we were going to make with them.  After searching through many recipes we finally found one that used fresh strawberries instead of frozen or a flavored syrup.  

I left out the red food coloring from the original recipe because I didn't have any and honestly, I wanted to keep these as natural as possible and really focus on the fresh strawberry.   This recipe makes a dense, moist, sweet cake.  If you prefer a lighter cake, try replacing the 3 whole eggs with 2 egg yolks and 5 egg whites.  

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup butter
• 2  1/2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon red food coloring
• 1 & 1/4 cups pureed strawberries
• 3 cups cake flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• pinch Salt
• 1 cup buttermilk

Notes: "flour, sifted" is different than "sifted flour"  Measure the flour first, then sift.   If you don't have buttermilk on hand you can make an easy substitute by adding 1 TBS white vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup of milk and letting it sit for about 5 minutes before adding.  I used lemon juice because I thought the lemon flavor would compliment the recipe. 


Preparation: 

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with liners and set aside.
•  In a large bowl, cream butter with sugar. (See my post on creaming) Add eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, food coloring and strawberries, beat for another 3 minutes.
• Sift dry ingredients and add to butter/egg mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix until combined.
• Fill cupcake tins 2/3 of the way up. Bake for 18 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Once the cupcakes are cool you can frost them.  A basic buttercream frosting would be good.  We tried whipped cream and cream cheese frosting.  The BFF preferred the cream cheese frosting (it was really good).   I really liked the whipped cream, I find it reminiscent of strawberry shortcake.  Whipped cream is what's pictured here on the blog.