a strawberry cupcake on a gloomy day

thanks to mandifer, i finally have a picture of one of my cupcakes!

here is a strawberry one, positioned next to a cup of coffee from the panni:

and how could i make a post about The strawberry cupcake without any recipe? (S, this is mostly for you since i know you'll use it)

ingredients:

strawberry sauce

2 cups (an overflowing little green basket from the store) of fresh strawberries, stemmed.

a little bit of sugar to taste (i don't use any in mine)

cupcake

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour (i use cake flour but all-purpose works fine)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup strawberry sauce

1/4 cup milk

cream cheese frosting

8 oz. (1 rectangle package) of cream cheese (room temp. let it sit out while you're making the other stuff)

1/2 stick butter (room temp)

4 cups sifted powdered sugar

1/4 cup (i end up using less) of strawberry sapreuce

directions

1. soak the strawberries, stemmed and cut up, with a bit of sugar for 15-20 minutes. put strawberries in a small saucepan and heat under medium heat. cook the strawberries until they get all soft. puree with a blender until it's nice and smooth. cool before using it in the recipe. (because i don't add more sugar to the strawberries, i skip the entire saucepan step and just puree the strawberries. this works fine, and you don't have to wait for it to cool)

2. preheat the oven to 350F. whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium sized mixing bowl (you don't have to use your giant one for this one). set it aside. in a separate bowl (an even smaller bowl), mix the milk and the strawberry sauce.

3. beat the butter on high until it's soft. add sugar and beat until it's light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. add eggs one at a time and beat smooth in between each.

4. add about a third of the flour mix to the butter/sugar mix and beat to combine. add a third of the milk/strawberry mix and beat until combined. keep alternating the flour and milk until you've finished!

5. scoop the mix into cupcake papers until almost full. bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean! 

frosting

1. sift powdered sugar into a bowl. (when i first started making cream cheese frosting, i would skip the sifting step and god, does it make a difference. sift, sift, sift!)

2. beat butter and cheese together until creamy.

3. add half the sugar, beat until combined. 

4. slowly add some strawberry sauce, not too much because it'll be runny otherwise.

5. gradually add some more sugar (more if you have to because it's too runny) 

6. beat, beat beat!

(another tip: if you want to bring your eggs to room temp real fast, just pop it in a bowl of not-so-hot water and wait for 2 seconds. feel them and they should be warm!)