Cupcake Craziness

Continuing in our celebrating milestones at potluck theme, last night was another festive occasion. We celebrated my son's 4th birthday, even though it's not technically until tomorrow. Since we're already planning an actual party for the weekend that will include cake, I decided to try my hand at cupcakes. I made a yellow cake batter from Smitten Kitchen and my own strawberry "frosting" per the request of the birthday boy. 

The cupcakes themselves turned out incredibly tasty and we actually pretty simple to make. I 1.5'd the recipe, since I wanted to make sure that everyone got their own cupcake. For the regular measurements, pop on over to Smitten Kitchen.

Start by creaming some butter and sugar (I actually used  3 sticks, yikes!)

Creamy!

Once creamed, add some vanilla & a bunch of eggs to the butter/sugar mixture

Then sift together all your dry ingredients

Sifted! 

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix till just combined. The batter yielded 36 cupcakes, so I baked them (for about 28 minutes at 350*) in shifts.

They came out perfectly

Then it came time for the frosting. My son asked for strawberry frosting, and I decided to take my tried and true cream cheese frosting and doctor it up a little instead of looking for a recipe online.

Yeah.

The first part turned out great.

Mix together 1 stick of softened unsalted butter and 1 8oz package of softened cream cheese

I then added 1 lb of powdered sugar and a couple tablespoon's of milk. The cream cheese frosting turned out perfectly. Now it was time to add in the strawberries.

I started with about 1.5 cups of chopped strawberries

And using my hand blender, mashed it down to this strawberry puree.

It was then added to the cream cheese frosting

I didn't take into account that when mashed, the strawberries would be very liquidy, thereby turning what was once a perfectly textured frosting into, well...

More of a sweet, strawberry sauce-like-topping.

So, of course, I thought I could salvage it. I added more cream cheese, but it was still pretty thin. I added more butter, but all that did was fleck the frosting with bits of butter that would not incorporate into the mix.

Mmm...buttery deliciousness

I even tossed it into the fridge to see if it would firm up. It didn't.

So, in the end, instead of piping beautiful designs onto the cupcakes (which had been my intent), I ended up taking each cupcake and dipping them into the "frosting" to coat them.

Toss a few candles in and *voila* - birthday cupcake!

After all was said and done, it didn't even seem to matter. Despite their somewhat sloppy appearance, the cupcakes were eaten, the frosting was eaten (and praised!) and even more frosting was eaten when folks realized they could dip their cupcakes back into the bowl. If I had put spoons out surrounding the bowl of frosting, it would probably have disappeared.

While my strawberry frosting didn't turn out as expected, it still managed to do its job, and the birthday boy was very pleased with it, so in turn, so was I. 

The meal proceeding the cupcakes, by the way, was extraordinary... we dined on chili, muligitawny stew, coconut rice, broccoli slaw, chips & salsa, homemade nachos and popovers. It was quite the array of food but it certainly provided for a festive feel.