Strawberry Cupcakes

Today I brought some (early) Valentine's Day cupcakes to share with Claire's skating teammates. I used the strawberry cupcake recipe from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. I've made that one before, and this time boosted the flavor with a bit of strawberry extract. With some chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top, they were good to go, and seemed to be pretty well enjoyed by everybody.

Cupcakes to Go

In early April, we went along with the Girl Scout troop for Scouts' Day at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. To make the drive home a bit more pleasant, I brought along a few batches of cupcakes. I made a batch of the Pretty in Pink strawberry cupcakes from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. Also from that book, I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. Finally, there was a batch of Banana-Butterscotch Cupcakes from Elinor Klivans's Cupcakes!. Good choices all.

Strawberry Cupcakes, Part 2

I finally got around to experimenting with the Pretty in Pink Cupcake recipe from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. My first attempt at boosting the strawberry flavor was using jarred strawberries in light syrup instead of "fresh" strawberries. The result? The cupcakes were much pinker (thanks, red food dye!), but oddly enough, they had less strawberry flavor than the cupcakes made with the red yet styrofoamesque fresh berries. Shrug. I think they're going to need extract or some other flavor booster, as Julie suggested earlier. I am going to try one more thing: rehydrating some dried strawberries, then pureeing them with fresh berries.

In the meantime, I'll have to order strawberry extract because it's impossible to find in stores in my area. In my hunt for strawberry extract, I found lime, various mints, and even ginger extracts. But no strawberry. Ginger extract is the sort of thing that gives me ideas, though.

Also in the meantime, I'm going to use the Pretty in Pink Cupcake formula for a batch of raspberry cupcakes. I was able to purchase raspberry extract, and California raspberries have been on sale here for the past week. I think they would be terrific topped with a fudge icing.