Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberry Frosting

For the past couple of days, I was thinking about how to jazz up a simple vanilla cupcake. Nothing too fancy, but something beyond the regular vanilla or chocolate frosting. Then I thought, strawberries!! It would be a nice, not too sweet topping that wouldn't overpower the delicate vanilla flavor of the cupcake. So tonight I fired up the oven and whipped up a batch of vanilla cupcakes with a strawberry buttercream frosting.


**Unfortunately I ran out of fresh strawberries, but can you imagine how pretty it would have looked with a strawberry quarter and maybe a sprig of mint??

For the cupcakes, I used Amy Sedaris's cupcake recipe. While I like the flavor of the cupcake, it is a little dense. It will make about 18 cupcakes.

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and the vanilla to the creamed butter, and continue to mix until the eggs are incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure all the eggs and butter have mixed well.

In another bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Slowly add the flour mix and the milk to the egg and butter mixture in alternating batches, starting and ending with the flour mixture.

Mix the batter just until the last of the flour is incorporated. Be sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure everything is well mixed.

Fill each muffin tin about 2/3 full of batter. Bake for about 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

1/4 cup seedless strawberry jam
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 - 4 cups confectioners sugar

In the bowl of the electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, vanilla, salt, and jam. Once the mixture has been well mixed, add in the confectioner's sugar, one cup at a time. As each cup of sugar becomes fully incorporated, continue to add sugar. You can adjust the amount of sugar that you want to add - more sugar if you want the frosting to have a stiffer consistency (for piping onto cupcakes), or less sugar if you want the frosting to be less stiff (for spreading onto cupcakes with a spatula).

This recipe is actually pretty versatile, because you can adjust the amount of strawberry jam according to taste. It's almost impossible to mess up this frosting!