Foodie Friday: Strawberry Cupcakes

Back in December, Annie of Annie’s Eats inspired me to make strawberry cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. In the past few years, I’ve been trying to cultivate a family tradition of eating lots of strawberries on Valentine’s Day. February marks the start of strawberry season in Florida, so they were readily available to me. In fact, Plant City was maybe a two hour drive south of Gainesville — and the labels usually indicated that’s about as far as they traveled to get to my home. So a recipe calling for lots of strawberries jumped right out at me. I love strawberries. Brian loves strawberries. Our children love strawberries. This was the perfect sweet treat for our “strawberry fest.”

I used Annie’s strawberry cupcake recipe from last December. Instead of milk, I used heavy cream because for some reason that’s what I thought her recipe called for while writing the shopping list. Also, I pureed the strawberries before mixing them into the batter. Finally, I added 5 drops of red food coloring to bring out that pink color I was looking for. For the frosting, I selected her original strawberry cupcake frosting recipe. Again, I tweaked it — I can’t help it, it’s in my nature to experiment in the kitchen! I increased the pureed strawberries to one whole cup, and I whipped in a cup of heavy cream to increase the volume. (Okay, and because I love fluffy whipped frosting!) Overall, these cupcakes have been a big hit. Thank you Annie for the recipes and the inspiration!

Strawberry Cupcake

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Foodie Friday: Delicious Cake!

So this week, I really don’t have a recipe for you. All I can say is that it’s been a little hectic, and nothing gets me into a better mood quite like chocolate. Luckily for me, Smitten Kitchen had a lovely recipe for a chocolate loaf cake early this week. I admit, I tweaked the recipe only slightly — I used plain milk with some raspberry vinegar since I can’t really justify buying buttermilk for one recipe. I also realize we just had cake last week and I’ve been whining about weight loss, but I have left over whipping cream, a bag of thawed strawberries, and a desire to enjoy something chocolaty. I actually mixed all of the dry ingredients together on Wednesday for fun and later convenience.

Anyway, here’s the finished product. Next week, I’ll probably try to come up with something a bit healthier to share.

A slice of deliciousness

The batter had a mousse-like texture to it, inviting me to enjoy some delicious raw batter. Because my oven is rather ridiculous, it only took about 43 minutes to bake the cake (the recipe originally called for 60-70 minutes — if I left it in there any longer, I’d have a charred, inedible brick). I served it with a drizzling of strawberry puree and a dollop of whipped cream. It was the perfect dessert to end this week on a sweet, chocolatey note.

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