Sweet Strawberry Vanilla Cupcakes

What a week.

Things at work have really picked up in the last two weeks, and probably won't calm down for the foreseeable future, but staying busy keeps me organized. It also gives me an excuse to bake more.

Unlike a lot of people I know, I find baking to be very calming. It's the one thing I do that I can shut out everything else and give it my undivided attention. However, it makes a mess. A mess that waits until the weekend for me to clean it up.

I baked two sets of cupcakes this week, a chocolate peanut butter cupcake and a vanilla strawberry cupcake. The chocolate cupcake recipe can be found here and the frosting recipe can be found on this Instagram picture. The chocolate peanut butter cupcakes were topped with a mini Reese's. Highly recommend them as they might have gotten the best reviews of anything I've brough into work yet.

For the strawberry vanilla cupcakes, those were a bit different as I didn't use any artificial sweetener in the cake or frosting. I'm not opposed to artificial sweetener, but I couldn't find any strawberry flavoring on short notice. It's a nice vanilla cake recipe that almost caramelizes during the baking process. They're not the most traditional looking cupcakes, they bake pretty flat and can be temperamental when baking, so patience is a must with this one.

The frosting is pretty interesting. Normally I would make plain buttercream, add strawberry extract or flavoring, some pink dye, and call it good. But again, I procrastinated this so wasn't able to do that. On the final trip to the grocery store, I found some freeze-dried strawberries and decided that would have to do. Blended them up into fine dust, and folded them into the buttercream to make some very strawberry frosting. Topped it all off with a macaroon from the bakery and called it good!

Cake Instructions
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
½ cup vegetable shortening
3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup whole milk, room temperature
½ cup buttermilk, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cake Instructions
Preheat oven to 350º F. Prepare three 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick baking spray or coated well with shortening or butter and floured, taking care to remove all excess flour.

Cream butter and shortening together until light and fluffy. Slowly add sugar one cup at a time, fully incorporating each cup before adding another. Add eggs one at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each egg before adding another.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour milks and vanilla into measuring cup and whisk together with a fork. Add to butter and shortening mixture, alternating between the milk mixture and dry ingredients – beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Once all ingredients are mixed together, stop the mixer and scrape down sides and bottom of bowl.

Evenly distribute batter into prepared cupcake pans. Fill each cup about 3/4 of the way to the top. Bake at 350 for 23-27 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let cool and frost as desired.

Frosting Ingredients
4 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla
5 cups powdered sugar
1 oz freeze-dried strawberries, pulverized into dust
4 oz whole milk
Frosting Instructions
In the bowl of a stand mixer, put the cream the butter, and vanilla together. Slowly add one cup of powdered sugar until it's all mixed in. It should be dry looking, at that point, add milk until frosting has reached the desired consistency. Add the freeze-dried strawberries in and mix until fully incorporated and the frosting is light pink.