Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
Andrea Potischman
Jul 24, 2020
I gotta say, I’m a sucker for fresh strawberry cupcakes. The fresh strawberry buttercream frosting on top is just a bonus. These light, flavorful strawberry cupcakes represent summer in all its glory. You can’t make them in winter, you need beautiful, juicy, summer berries to make them as fantastic as they are intended to be.
My fondness for these pale-pink beauties is they combine two of my favorite desserts; vanilla birthday cake and strawberry shortcake together in one. Seriously, these cupcakes have summer desserts written all over them and make the perfect baking project for the weekend.
Cupcakes often get a bad wrap if you ask me. Well, truthfully, they get labeled “kid food” which is somewhat unfair if you ask. At my age, I love cupcakes just as must as I did when I was a kid, possibly more.
The classic way to decorate cupcakes is with a frosting swirl shown here. You won’t find frosting on muffins; this is one of the biggest differences between the two. A buttercream swirl is easily obtained using a pastry bag fitted with a star tip. If you don’t have, no worries, it’s not required. You can always frost with a knife like our grandmother did back in the day. Or, use a ziplock bag or parchment paper to make a simple stand-in disposable pastry bag. Tips on how to make a pastry bag can be found here.
Cupcake-wise, the most common frosting flavors are vanilla frosting and chocolate frosting. In the United States, most people make what’s called an American buttercream frosting. American buttercream is what I use here with the addition of fresh strawberry puree. This is the easiest frosting to make and uses just a few basic ingredients; butter, confectioner’s sugar, and flavoring.
Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients:
For the Cupcakes:
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 3/4 cups cake flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3/4 cup strawberries, finely chopped
For the Strawberry Buttercream Frosting:
- 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 1/4 cup fresh mashed or blended strawberry puree
- Pinch of salt
- 2 cups Confectioners' sugar
Directions:
- For the Cupcakes: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line about 14 standard muffin cups with liners and set aside.
- In a small mixing bowl, add the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla and which until incorporated.
- In the bowl of a kitchen mixer, such as a KitchenAid, fitted with a paddle attachment, add the sugar and butter and beat on medium, scrapping down the sides as needed, until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.
- With the mixer on low, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and mix until incorporated. Add the egg mixture a little bit at a time until just combined.;Stir in the the milk and mix just until blended.
- Using a large rubber tip spatula, gently fold in the strawberries. Fill the cupcake liners a little more than halfway full. Place in the oven and bake until set and a tester comes out clean, about for 25 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and very carefully remove the cupcakes from the baking pan to cool on a wire wrack.
- For the Strawberry Buttercream Frosting: Clean the kitchen mixer bowl and add the butter, beat on high, until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Reduce the spread to low and add the strawberry puree and salt and blend.
- With the mixer still on low, slowly add the confectioners' sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. Mix until incorporated.
- Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, use a pastry bag and star shaped pastry tip to pipe the buttercream into the frosting. If you are not serving right away, keep the cupcakes refrigerated.
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