Almost a Classic

What goes together better than Chocolate & Strawberries?  

As we were eating the apple cupcakes of the previous experiment, my friends Chris & Jamie put their brains together (which is a very dangerous thing) and requested a strawberry cupcake, with a chocolate filling and a strawberry frosting.  At first I was a little skeptical, because I thought this would be way too much strawberry and not enough chocolate.  But, I said I would do it anyway.

Instead of a strawberry flavored cake, I decided to do a vanilla based cake that had chunks of fresh strawberries mixed in.  I used Martha Stewart's Recipe for Strawberry Cupcakes, that can be found here.  For the filling, I made a tasty chocolate ganache.  I first learned how to make ganache from JoyofBaking.com and have been a big fan of it ever since.  The important thing to know, and you can read all about this on the Joy of Baking site, is that ganache can take make different forms, like a glaze or a truffle.  For my cupcake, I wanted it to be a whipped ganache, so it would be airy and light.

When it came down to the frosting, I was torn.  The Martha Stewart site linked to her recipe for Strawberry Buttercream, which I am sure would have worked just fine.  However, I'm not a fan of egg whites in my buttercream.   I prefer what is considered "American Buttercream," which is pretty much butter, powdered sugar and whatever flavoring you are going for.  So, I just made my own Strawberry Buttercream.  I'm not going to lie to you - I fell in love with it and may have eaten a few spoonfuls before frosting the cupcakes.   And, it's very simple.

1/2 Cup    Butter
1/2 Cup    Fresh Strawberries, diced
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Dash of Salt
3 Cups     Confectioners Sugar (feel free to use more or less depending on your taste)

Just cream the butter.  Then add in strawberries, vanilla & salt and beat.  Add Sugar in parts, mixing in between.  My frosting was a bit thin, but thats because of all the liquid in the strawberries.  I stuck the frosted cupcakes in the fridge and they firmed up enough.

I love that you can see the chunks of strawberry inside of the cupcake!  I still had a lot of strawberries, so I cut them in half and used them to top the cupcakes.  They were very yummy and certainly one of my favorites so far.

As a side bar (since it wasn't really a cupcake) I had a request from my friend Keleigh that week as well, to make her a muffin.  I broke out my trusty Magnolia Bakery book again and made her these delicious Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins.   I think she was pleased.

Attempt at Re-Creation

My friend Jamie introduced me to the fabulousness that is "The Flying Cupcake" while we were in Indy together.   In January of this year, Jamie's birthday was approaching and we were about to be working together again, this time in Sarasota, Florida.  Immediately I went to the "Flying Cupcake" website, hoping to order a dozen of Jamie's favorites and have them shipped to Sarasota.  My only problem was that they don't ship cupcakes.  How disappointing.

This left me with no other choice but to bake the cupcakes myself.  I set out on an attempt to recreate greatness from "The Flying Cupcake" - Jamie's favorite, the Razzamatazz.  

I had been in Sarasota for about a day, and it was already Jamie's birthday so I had to get to work.  The first step for me, when tackling a baking project this big: Call Sarah.  My friend Sarah is the one person I know who loves baking probably more than I do.  And she lives in Sarasota, so of course she was the perfect partner in crime for this experiment.  

We started with a recipe for Dark Chocolate Cupcakes.  I'm a horrible person because I can't remember what recipe I used, but I can tell you that for other cupcake adventures I have used this one and the cupcakes are delicious.   To make them Dark Chocolate, all I do is substitute Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa in place of the unsweetened Cocoa.  

As the filling, I used a jar of Black Raspberry Preserves.  You can use Red Raspberry Preserves too, but I really wanted something seedless and that was only available at my store in Black.  As the frosting, I used this Raspberry Buttercream (which was amazing!) and topped it with a fresh raspberry.  I think they came out pretty tasty.

What matters most is that the Birthday Girl was all smiles upon receiving her surprise treats.

It was a successful mission at least, and it lead to many more missions throughout the 4 months I was in Sarasota.