Strawberry Cupcakes

Strawberries are my favorite! I wish I lived somewhere closer to strawberry farms, I would eat fresh strawberries everyday. Living in Chicago is not giving me too many opportunities to get fresh farmed Michigan strawberries. Working full time is not helping either. So Thursday’s Farmers Markets on Daley Plaza downtown are basically the only option for me. During June, almost every Thursday I got couple of little baskets of those fresh, beautiful, red and juicy strawberries…

I love to eat them just by itself, but it's great to make something sweet - strawberry desserts are great. Strawberry-rhubarb crisp was one weekend, than cupcakes, and jam… yes, I did slave in the kitchen for couple of hours to make 9 pint size jars of strawberry jam – but that’s another post. Today, I want to share my recipe for those little moist and sweet cupcakes with whole strawberries inside. The recipe for the cake batter is very simple and you can make it in 9x13 pan, or 9” round pan, and pretty much put whatever fruit you want.

I made cupcakes with strawberries and powdered sugar on top. I frosted some with strawberry butter-cream frosting, but unfortunately I do not have any pictures of those.

Strawberry Cupcakes

5 eggs, yolks and whites separated

1 ¼ cup sugar

1 vanilla sugar or 1 tsp pure vanilla

½ cup vegetable oil

2 cups flour

2 heaping tsp baking powder

20-25 medium size fresh strawberries, washed, stem removed, and dried

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line cupcake form with paper liners. Separate egg yolks from egg whites. Beat egg whites until soft peaks and set aside. In a clean mixer bowl mix the egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla until well incorporated. Add vegetable oil, mix for another minute. Fold in beaten egg whites. Mix the flour with baking powder andadd to the egg mixture about 3 TBS at the time, slowly folding in together.

Fill about ½ of each cupcake form with the batter and insert the strawberries in the middle. The strawberry does not have to be pushed in too far, the batter will rise up as it bakes and will cover the strawberries anyway. This should make about 20-24 cupcakes.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden. Cool completely before frosting or sprinkling with powdered sugar. Cupcakes are even better the next day, they get more and more moist as they get older…

For strawberry butter-cream frosting I used 1 stick of butter and about 1 ½ cup of powdered sugar. Mix it together until creamy. I made strawberry compote and added to the frosting. Compote: about 1 1/2 cup of fresh strawberries, roughly mashed with potato masher, added some sugar, not exactly sure how much, maybe ¼ cup, maybe more, just taste it and see if more is needed. Let it simmer on low heat until thickens. Cool completely before adding to the butter cream frosting.

You will only need about 2-3 TBS of strawberry compote to the frosting. I added 1 tsp. lemon juice to bring out the flavor of strawberries. {Instead of making your own compote you can just add about 2-3 TBS of low sugar strawberry jam.}