Bake #12: Jenny Bakes Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream

Vanilla and chocolate aside, this Strawberry Cupcake is probably the best epitomy of the early Cupcake Era back in the 50s. Reminiscent of many a childhood here, I’m sure. Sweet or tangy - depending on which part of the world you’re in and whether they are in season - little bits of fruit amassed in a cloud of light, moist and crumbly soft cake. The cake is rather bland, if you ask me. But together with the strawberries and surprisingly, the strawberry buttercream, it suddenly takes on more depths in flavor. Either that or I’ve over-spiked my buttercream just a tad! I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Now why would I ever want to do that to such a lovely all-time favorite? I did, however, add some chocolate ganache leftover from another bake. It definitely spiked up the light fruity flavors in a good, non-alcoholic way!

I also have to say this officially: I HATE MAKING MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM. PERIOD! Any toppings that require cooked sugar, precise temperature and worst of all, humongous recipe proportions that are mathematically troublesome to scale back - yeah, like this recipe! Even halving the recipe would yield too much buttercream than I need so just me being me, I winged it and needless to say, the buttercream was somewhat a disaster. Too liquidy and not pipe-able - not that I intended to pipe the frosting in the first place. So to cover the mistake according to the grand plan I conceived ages ago, I went gourmet on it. Et voila......petits gâteaux aux fraises. Bon appetit!