Last fall, I won a super awesome giveaway from lovely Lindsay over at Love and Olive Oil. When I first got an email from her notifying me as a winner, I was happy. But when the box came, it truly felt like Christmas. Among many wonderful items that I found in my goodies bag was this Desserts from the Famous Loveless Cafe cookbook. I quickly went through each page as I tried to not drool on my new book, while bookmarking almost each one of them. I secretly wished that some of the recipes would come in “easier to half” measurement. First of all, there was no way that I would make all of those recipes (serving eight and more) and try to finish them all. But this strawberry cupcake recipe was one of the ones that stuck in my head. I had also made their to-die for banana pudding, which I realized now as I am typing that I had never posted. I probably forgot to take pictures, and now I have a reason to make it again.
Now back to these strawberry cupcakes. There was nothing pretentious about this cake, or its frosting. The cake calls for fresh strawberry puree that is mixed directly into the batter. The batter uses all cake flour and egg white, which is responsible for its beautiful crumbs and texture. The mixing method was a little bit new for me – instead of creaming the butter and adding the flour into the the wet-ingredients, this one calls for the butter and strawberry puree into the flour mix. I have no explanation for that method, but it worked magically. This should have been called the dream cake. Because the strawberry tastes so fresh, light, and is perfectly balanced. And the frosting? Just a simple buttercream frosting mixed in with puree strawberry that turns the frosting to a lovely pink color. No artificial ingredients, just pure goodness that comes from ingredients enjoyed at its peak season. Now you may ask, what was the occasion? My lovely nanny’s birthday. I think this was a perfect celebration dessert for someone who has been responsible to make sure that my daughter is safe, happy and always has tons of fun when we’re at work.
Ingredients
Cake
2 cups fresh and ripe strawberries, washed, stemmed and hulled
2 1/3 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
Strawberry Butter-cream Frosting
3 sticks unsalted butter at room temp
4 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
1/4 cup fresh strawberry puree reserved earlier
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Directions
Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place paper cupcake liners into standard-size muffin pans. Puree the strawberries in a food processor. Measure 3/4 cup for the batter and reserve 1/4 cup for the butter cream.
Sift the cake flour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the sugar and baking powder and blend on low just until combined. Add the butter and strawberry puree and mix on low until combined. In a separate bowl whisk together the egg whites and vanilla. Add this mixture to the flour mixture and mix on low, scraping bowl as needed. Mix on medium a few more seconds until well combined. Using a 1 tablespoon scoop, scoop batter into mini cupcake liners.
Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Bake about 20 mins for standard cupcakes. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, remove from pan and allow them to cool on a cooling rack.
Strawberry Butter-cream Frosting
Cream butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the confectioners sugar about a cup at a time and beat just until blended.
Add the puree and vanilla, scrape bowl as needed and beat until the buttercream is light and fluffy, approximately 3-5 minutes (mine was perfect at about a minute).
Frost cupcakes and decorate as your heart desires.
Yield: 72 mini muffins or 20 standard cupcakes
Adapted from Desserts from the Famous Loveless Cafe
Hi Yudith,
These cupcakes look beautiful! I can only imagine the excitement on my daughter’s face if I were to make these for her. Pink is her favorite color. Lovely clicks and beautiful presentation!
I have never made cupcakes using fresh strawberries, must be great!
Congrats on winning such a wonderful giveaway my friend
This looks like a delicious choice!
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
These cupcakes look beautiful Judith and I am in complete admiration of any mom who can make frosting look that wonderful (I’ve never found the time/patience – lol). What a delicious looking treat.
These look so refreshing and lovely! And how wonderful to have fresh strawberry flavor rather than artificial!
Bookmarked! Definitely bookmarked till after my vegan cleanse is finished!
these are gorgeous cupcakes! i happen to have a lot of strawberries in the fridge at the moment, i’m soooo tempted to make these today!
Goodness, that pink frosting is almost ethereal. So beautiful! You are so sweet to make these for your nanny. I can almost taste the freshness of the strawberries from your stunning photographs Yudith!
What perfect looking and perfectly delectable cupcakes!
Really nice, this will be bookmarked to be used when the strawberry season kicks in
Your Cupcakes are so cute! I love the strawberries in it.
Great looking cupcakes! And the recipe looks terrific. Love the picture. Thanks for a fun post.
Your cupcakes look so yummy! Great photography =)
These cupcakes are so very pretty!
Love the pink! Cupcakes look tasty
These look AMAZING! So fluffy and delicate. Perfect piping too!
Wow! This look blissfully delicious! I saw that somewhere
Every cupcake looks perfect. I wish I could do that. I get a few but not the whole batch like you did.
Winning a giveaway is so exciting. I love the look of these cupcakes. The way the frosting has been applied is just amazing and I love those little sprinkles xx
Oh my gosh, your photos are gorgeous! Do you mind if I ask what icing tip you used and how to did that beautiful ruffly frosting? Thanks so much!
Hi Nessie, I used Wilton 1M, so the largest “star” tip they had. I start on the outer edge of the cupcake, and make a loop slow motion, and as I go around on the second loop, I just slightly “stack” the second frosting. This gives the frosting a “stacking” height. I hope that explains it for you!!
Lovely cupcakes Yudith – why do mine never look as pretty and well-risen as that? Mine always kind of rise up and flood over the edge of the cases a bit
I bet the strawberry is a beautiful flavour in the cakes!
Summer in a cake—looks stunning, my friend!
Hi! These look amazing. I’ve been looking for a good strawberry cupcake recipe for ages. Question: When you say that the egg whites and vanilla need to be whisked together, do you mean that they have to be whisked together until the mixture forms soft peaks and then added to the flour mixture?
Hi Selina, the recipe actually didn’t really ask for the mixture to form “soft peaks”, so basically just mix the two together, so you will get some small bubbles. It will turn into soft peaks during the final mixing with the flour. I hope that helps!
Can you make this recipe into a cake??
Absolutely! I would try (2) 8-inch round or 9-inch round. I normally bake round cakes for about 30-35 minutes. But I would definitely monitor the oven and check with tooth pick. Good luck!
[...] frosting was actually surprisingly simple. Blissfully Delicious has a great recipe on her blog (which is adorable) for a Strawberry Buttercream that reminds me [...]
[...] frosting was actually surprisingly simple. Blissfully Delicious has a great recipe on her blog (which is adorable) for a Strawberry Buttercream that reminds me [...]
I was just looking for a frosting recipe and this turned out tasting amazing, smelling incredible and even piping well with a star tip. I used frozen strawberries and puried them and believe it or not the icing was very smooth and not bumpy. Will be one of my favorites.
i am making these for valentines day! I have been searching for the perfect strawberry cake/cupcakes! These look beautiful and tasty!! Ill let you all know how it goes! wish me luck!
I just finished baking a batch of cupcakes and they are as delicious as they look in your pictures. Because the cake itself isn’t as sweet as others, the frosting is perfect. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
[...] For the icing on these I decided to go with a Strawberry Buttercream I found at Blissfully Delicious. [...]
I made these cupcakes with the strawberry frosting for my daughters birthday dinner and they were GREAT!!! My husband tried one prior to the dinner and I had to hide them to keep him from eating more.
It’s strawberry season now and I’m going to make this today!! Hopefully it doesn’t fail..but I’ll eat it!
oops! put 2 times too much flour in it…. now i’m sad
[...] Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting - This cupcake recipe was so beautiful: it has a gorgeous fluffy texture, light almost like sponge cake, and this beautiful, pink frosting that tastes like fresh strawberries. This is definitely one of my top three cupcake recipes. Hands. Down. LOVE this cupcake! [...]
These are FANTASTIC!!! Cake is wonderful and frosting is to die for!! YUMM! I am making it into a cake today. THanks for the wonderful recipe!
Glad you liked them
Absolutly Fabulous cupcake. The frosting was great as well but was a little runny with strawberry juice. What did Ido wrong?? Should I add extra powered sugar? But other than that my kiddos loved them.
The puree should have a little liquid, but otherwise it should be not cause the frosting to be runny. Maybe the puree wasn’t drained enough? Next time, you can also try putting the frosting in the frig a little bit to get the butter a little less soft. Glad you liked the recipe otherwise
How strong is the strawberry flavor in the cake? I’m looking for a recipe that has a nice strawberry flavor without using artificial flavoring. I am making a cake for a 2-year old’s birthday and would prefer to make a cake from scratch rather than using a box cake mix.
I could definitely taste the strawberries in both the cake and frosting. Let me know if you decide to try it!
[...] to make these cupcakes you should go check out this page and follow their instructions. It’s pretty simple, even though it does require cake flour and [...]
Tried these cupcakes out yesterday! I actually ended up adding 1 3/4 cups of strawberry puree to the batter for the flavor to really pop. I tried both ways and preferred the more strawberry batch and the cake itself was more moist as well which is something I always look for when trying new cupcake recipes. With this adjustment it is a sure keeper!