Strawberry Strawberry Cupcakes

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Raise your hand if you've ever planned a trip around a cupcake shop visit?  Silos Bakery? Check.  Georgetown Cupcake? Check.  Magnolia? Sprinkles?  Check, Check.  I like cupcakes.  I've searched for lots of copy-cat recipes to all those famous shops and none have met my expectations (too lightweight, too dry, too heavy...just not right).  So I went with a default trick of doctoring up a cake mix for my cupcakes.  The real star of this show is the strawberry flavor--and it comes from freeze-dried strawberries.  Since I'm home like everyone else in the world trying to avoid the coronavirus, I went wandering through my food storage and brought up the can of freeze dried berries.   They are PERFECT for cupcakes.  You get tons of strawberry flavor and you don't need any artificial flavoring!  You can buy them in smaller packages at Trader Joes--maybe even regular grocery stores.

Cupcakes
1 Duncan Hines white cake mix
1 C. milk
3 large egg whites
1/3 C. vegetable oil
1/4 C. crushed/powdered freeze dried strawberries (not fresh berries)
1/2 C sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and get 24 cupcake liners ready.  Pulverize  about 1 cup of the freeze dried strawberries in a zipper bag  with a rolling pin (you'll get enough for cake and frosting).  Mix up the batter by following the directions on the box, but sub out the water with whole milk.  Add the sour cream and the strawberry powder.  Mix just enough to get it all mixed together with no streaks of white remaining.  Divide the batter into 24 cupcakes (I think I got 22).  The box said to bake for 18-22 minutes BUT I went with 16 and it was just right.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 C butter, room temp
1/2 C cream cheese, room temp (4 oz, which is half a brick)
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp coconut extract
1/8 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 Tbs freeze dried strawberry powder
3 C. Powdered sugar
1-2 Tbs milk

Use paddle attachment on the stand mixer and cream the butter and cream cheese together.  Add the extracts and strawberry powder.  Alternate adding the powdered sugar and milk (on low) and mix on low until all combined.  Switch to the whisk attachment and whip on medium-high for 3-4 minutes to get all fluffy and light pink.

When cupcakes are completely cool, pipe frosting onto your cupcakes (I found that I actually preferred the ratio of frosting when I used the smaller tip than my jumbo star tip).  You can freeze these completely frosted if you want (I tested that out for you...an entire cupcake, with its pretty frosting will defrost in about 15 minutes and taste delicious). 


Freeze dried strawberries are the trick.  You can't use fresh strawberries because everything will be too wet and diluted.  The freeze drying concentrates the flavor.  Game changer!