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!
