I was doing some research on strawberries and it seems that in the past, their peak season has been June through August. A few short summer months to enjoy strawberry pies, strawberry cupcakes, strawberry glazes, strawberry jams, and even strawberry & spinach salads. Due to the new methods in farming and harvesting, they are now in prime season April through September. Yay for us! And the bonus is that they are on super duper discount at the grocery right now - 2 cases for $3! In honor of moving forward with the seasons, I have decided to experiment with a new cupcake flavor - strawberry! It may need some further tweaking before it comes to market, due to the altitude issues, but the flavor profile is right on track!
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| clean 'em |
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| core 'em |
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| I got this little tool in the home section of a department store for $6.99 - handy! and you save more valuable strawberry! |
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| put 'em in a cuisinart and puree away! |
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| fresh strawberry puree at your service - I wish there was smell-o-vision for this one | | | |
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| slice... |
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| ...and dice |
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| ready for the oven |
For this batch of strawberry cupcakes I'm using vanilla cake batter as the base flavor. For the back row, I added the strawberry puree in addition to fresh strawberry pieces. For the front row, I only added fresh strawberry pieces. You can see the obvious color difference. We'll see if there's an obvious flavor difference.
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| the cooling period |
The cupcake wrappers were not filled enough - but not because I measured anything wrong - these cupcakes just didn't rise at all. Usually when filling the wrappers you generally fill them 3/4 full because the cupcakes should rise 1/4 above the top of the wrapper, giving you that perfect cupcake size. I am deducing that because of all of the extra sugar content in the strawberry puree and strawberry pieces, that sugar reacted with the sugar already in the vanilla batter and caused a malfunction in my high-altitude oven. This recipe may need less sugar in the vanilla batter from the get-go because the natural sugars from the strawberries will make up the difference.
Then I took a vanilla buttercream and added a bunch (too much?) of the fresh strawberry puree. It turned out to be more of a strawberry glaze than frosting. My guinea pig, who I feed all of my experiments, said that it almost tasted like sweetened strawberry yogurt. Not bad, but maybe not so good for a cupcake topping. Then I topped them off with fresh strawberry garnish for that little extra flavor and texture.
You can see how the cupcake didn't really rise due to altitude issues but the texture of the cake is quite moist. The frosting doesn't have enough hold so it becomes a glaze...still tastes like a delicious strawberry delight! Not quite a true batter cupcake. Yet...
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