Strawberry Buttermilk Cupcakes

aka. THE BEST CUPCAKES EVER.

Matt made me go to the bookstore, and I ended up picking up three new books that I absolutely do not need, one of them being Martha Stewart's cupcake book. Clearly, I needed to bake immediately.

These may be my favorite cupcakes of all time. I think the boys agreed, they got demolished in record time. I swapped out her frosting for a concoction of my own, and swapped buttermilk for regular milk. Fresh strawberries, vanilla, buttermilk? YES PLEASE.

Here's how you make them! (Makes ... a ton. Like 36 - 40)

You'll need:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour (not self rising)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large whole eggs, plus 1 egg white
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups finely chopped strawberries, plus more for garnish


Frosting:
- 1 box of powdered sugar
- 4 oz cream cheese
- 4 spoonfuls of strawberry jam
- pinch of salt
- 1/4 cup of milk

While not exactly simple per se, these have become my new favorite cupcake. SO moist, SO delicious. Watch me work.

First, sift together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Might want to preheat your oven to about 350 degrees at this point.



Cream together the sugar, vanilla, and softened butter, until pale and fluffy. Then, add the eggs, one at a time, into the mixture. Make sure each egg is beaten into the butter/sugar before added the next egg. Did that sentence make sense? No idea.

Next, mix in the flour in two batches, alternating with the buttermilk.



Now, you'll want to chop up about 1/2 of your strawberries. We'll use the rest for garnish. Fold the chopped berries into your batter. When it bakes up, it'll look like this...dispersing fresh berries all through your cupcake!



Fill each cupcake tin about 3/4 of the way up, and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool on a rack completely, about 30 minutes.



For the icing, pretty much dump everything in a bowl and stir.



If you want it thinner, you can add more milk. I really like the flavor of this icing. Originally I was just going to make the one on the back of the powdered sugar box, but it was WAYYYY too sweet. So, to counter it, I added a bit of salt, then some strawberry jam and the cream cheese. WAY good. Too good? I ate the leftovers with a spoon. Don't tell anyone.

Pile the frosting on top, and garnish with your strawberries!




Yeah. That happened. Thank you Martha, you've made my world a much better place.

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla