Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes are just the strawberry recipe you need in your life – easy to whip up, packed with tart & sweet natural berry flavors, and an ode to spring!
Have you noticed how inexpensive strawberries have been lately? Normally, a pint of berries goes for $3.99 on island but the past couple of weeks, we have been getting them for under $2/pint! Thus, I started hoarding strawberries like it was the end of the world and they were the cure. That seems like a smart idea, until you find yourself with five pints of strawberries at the sam ripening stage. Meaning I had to start cooking and baking with them as soon as possible!
One morning I made my fig and strawberry smoothie for breakfast and then a quick strawberry compote to top my pancakes for the weekend. I still had strawberries laughing at me. So I made this strawberry coffee cake – you MUST make this! It’s divine and you’ll want to eat the entire pan. Still, endless strawberries. I was barely making a dent. I froze half of them for smoothies – BOOM! Still, berries were lingering. For the final recipe, I decided to make strawberries cupcakes topped with strawberry buttercream.
This recipe is based off of my mother’s vanilla cake recipe – some tweaks here and there allowed for me adding fresh juicy berries to the batter and buttercream.
A note about the buttercream: if you’re adding fresh chopped strawberries to it directly, you’re going to get a little separation like you can see above. That didn’t bother me and the flavor was the freshest, tartest I could get. But if you’re making these for a party or somewhere that they need to stand for hours, I recommend cooking the berries down to a syrup. Bravetart has a great recipe on how to do this strawberry reduction.
Go forth and bake these fresh strawberry cupcakes my friends – and lick this buttercream off the beaters, because it’s that good!
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ cup whole milk
- ¼ cup orange juice
- 1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
- 1 cup shortening*
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- Preheat your oven to 350F and prepare a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners. Set aside. Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes).
- Incorporate the eggs one at a time. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder and in a smaller bowl whisk together the milk and orange juice.
- Add the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients, alternating each until everything is mixed in. Do not over mix! Remove bowl from mixer and fold in chopped strawberries. Using a scoop, pour batter into each lined muffin tin.
- Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until golden brown around the edges. Let cakes cool all the way through before decorating.
- To make frosting: whip all the ingredients together for 10-15 minutes until light and fluffy. Pipe onto cupcakes and top with slice of fresh strawberry.
- *Note: In this recipe, I used coconut shortening instead of regular shortening (no cholesterol). You can substitute for regular shortening, or a mix of shortening and butter.
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