strawberry cupcakes + vanilla cream frosting

It's not that I wanted to make cupcakes tonight. But you see, I had all these gorgeous strawberries and was so afraid they were going to go bad. Something had to be done.

 

Enter: my newest first-search for recipes. If you don't follow Jessica over at How Sweet Eats, there is seriously something wrong with you. Or maybe you've never heard of her blog, and that makes me sad. I love her funny posts, gorgeous pictures and amazing recipes. I've made several things from her blog including her homemade barbeque sauce, roasted potato salad (ah-ma-zing), and now these amazing strawberry cupcakes. Not to mention I've drooled over and bookmarked some of her beautiful mixed drinks and several desserts.

So, these strawberry cupcakes are pretty darn awesome. I almost ate a whole bunch without even adding the frosting. I think some strawberry jam or strawberries on top would have been really great, but I was afraid they would get all watery over the frosting.

Oh - and I didn't have any more cupcake liners. But that didn't stop me! A few years ago some of the SKANK's decided to make sweet potato cupcakes and follow a recipe online that instructed using parchment paper instead of liners. Of course we had only wax paper...which we didn't realize wasn't the same thing...and that was quite a disaster, pulling out the cupcakes, dumping the half-baked cuppies into real liners. Yikes. Won't make that mistake again.

Anyway, I thought these turned out super cute with the parchment lining. It worked best for me to fit and fold them into the cupcake tins and dollop only a little at a time inside the parchment cradle with a spoon. This allowed for the cuppies to bake around and flatten out the folds.

Awesome! And - I got this fabric from my boss's mom - she was giving away a bunch of random fabrics - and it turns out this is some Ralph Lauren HOME collection fabric! I really want to use it to make some pillows, they would look nice with our couches. Oh...sorry...tangent...

I used a vanilla buttercream for the frosting. I wish it could have been a white chocolate buttercream, but I didn't have any good quality white chocolate to use.

Vanilla Buttercream

~ingredients~
1/2 c butter (I used 1/4 c and 1/4 c shortening - that was all I had)
1 T vanilla (or more - I wanted a lot of vanilla flavoring in the frosting)
1-2 T heavy cream (as needed)
2-3 c powdered sugar

~instructions~

1. Cream everything together. That's it. Easy, huh?

Anyway, check out How Sweet Eats for the strawberry cupcakes recipe!

Anyone else have a semi-disastrous kitchen or baking episode??