Strawberry Perfection

I've been having trouble finding a good strawberry cupcake recipe that uses real strawberries instead of strawberry extract. Well, I did find one, and it's delicious, but it's more like a strawberry muffin than a cupcake. Today I decided to wing it and make my own strawberry cupcake recipe. I think it turned out pretty awesome, especially for a first try. I started out by thawing ~4 cups of frozen strawberries (it was a little less than three cups once they thawed). Then I pureed them in the blender. I reserved 4 tbsp. of the strawberry puree for the frosting and put the rest in a big mixing bowl (~1 to 1 1/4 c. of puree). Here's the recipe as I made it today, and it was delicious, but next time I might add a bit more strawberry puree to enhance the strawberry flavor (or scale down the rest of the ingredients to just make 12 cupcakes but still use 1 c. of puree). As is, this recipe made 18 cupcakes: Strawberry Cupcakes 1 c. strawberry puree 1/4 c. melted butter 1 c. sugar 1/4 c. vegetable oil 2 eggs 1/2 c. vanilla yogurt 1 3/4 c. all purpose flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt

• Preheat oven to 350F.


• Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl.


• Mix strawberry puree, sugar, butter, and oil with a whisk or a hand mixer.


• Add the eggs and mix well.


• Add the yogurt and mix well.


• Slowly mix in the dry ingredients.


• Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners and fill 1/2 - 2/3 full of batter (don't overfill).


• Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.


• Frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting or strawberry frosting (see my recipe below).

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting (this makes a lot of frosting, enough to pipe a good amount of frosting onto 18 cupcakes; if frosting with a butter knife, I would halve this recipe) ~Another note on the frosting: 4 tbsp. of puree was probably too much, since the frosting was a little runny (consistency is fine if you refrigerate the cupcakes). Next time I'll try using 3 tbsp.

• 4 tbsp. strawberry puree (see note above about using less)


• 4 tbsp. softened salted butter


• 2 tbsp. softened cream cheese


• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract


• 3 1/2 - 4 c. powdered sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth, then add 1 c. of powdered sugar and the vanilla. Beat in the strawberry puree, and beat in powdered sugar 1/2 c. to 1 c. at a time until it reaches the desired consistency (it will probably take about 3 1/2 to 4 c. of powdered sugar since there's so much liquid from the puree).