Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

I really need to do these more often... Anyhoo! Time for more cupcakes :D

I've been doing quite a bit more baking lately, and looking for recipe suggestions, combination ideas and all sorts of fun stuff.

This time, my girlfriend requested that I make Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes. Want to know a secret? I don't even like lemon cake! Oh, the things we do for love.

And time for pictures!

First, my drink. Whipped Cream Vodka (yes, again) and Shasta (!) Orange Soda. Since we got a WinCo in town, I have to have the Shasta soda. It just reminds me of where I grew up :]

And I was so excited to make these, that I forgot to take a picture showing how excited I was! Derp.

Now, in order to do a "strawberry lemonade" flavor, I made a light lemon cupcake with a strawberry cream cheese frosting. Let's gather our ingredients!

For the lemon cupcakes:

• 3 cups self-rising flour
• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Vanilla extract not pictured... Because I have the memory of a goldfish :D

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees, and grease and line your muffin tins.

First step: Flour! Now, the recipe calls for self-rising flour. But I don't have any, and I'm not about to buy some for one recipe. So instead, I combined 3 cups of all purpose flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt.

I sifted it together 3 times, but if you can also whisk it together.

Once the flour is ready, beat together the butter and sugar with your electric mixer.

Now go ahead and beat in the eggs. One at a time, making sure each one is fully incorporated before adding the next.

Next, mix in the vanilla and lemon zest.

Now a note on the lemon zest. I have never zested any citrus until now. Boy, do I wish there was a machine for that! Total pain in my neck, quite literally.

After the lemon zest and vanilla are all mixed in, it's time for the flour, milk and lemon juice.

Add 1/3 of the flour to the butter mixture, then half of the milk and half of the lemon juice. Add another third of the flour, then the rest of the milk and the rest of the lemon juice. Lastly, add in the remaining third of the flour.

Beat until just combined, be careful to not over mix.

Once it's all mixed in, it should look something like this:

Now grab your ice cream scoop and fill those tins! Only about 2/3 full please :]

For bake times, I checked mine after 13 minutes, and they were still raw in the middle. 16 minutes seemed to work perfectly.

While those bake away, we're going to work on our frosting!

For the strawberry frosting:

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons fresh strawberry puree

Side note time! Here, the recipe called for "fresh" strawberry puree and 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract. I didn't have fresh strawberries, and I forgot to thaw the frozen ones that I did have. Also, I wanted more of a strawberry flavor.

So instead, I used 1 tablespoon of vanilla and 1 tablespoon of strawberry extract mixed in with strawberry puree.

First cream together the butter and cream cheese.

Mix in the vanilla real quick. Next, is the powdered sugar.

With the powdered sugar, you want to add it gradually to make sure it mixes in real nice and smooooooth.

Here's about what it looks like after all the powdered sugar is mixed in:

Lastly, add in the strawberry puree.

Now you want to whip it really quickly for a while so you can get a lot of air in there. We want it light and airy.

Let's get our cupcakes all ready to frost :D

Mmm... Yummy little blank canvases!

As usual, fill up your piping bag and go to town!

Ta-da!

Please excuse the poor quality pictures. I still haven't gotten around to buying an actual camera just yet.

I think they look pretty damn cute, if I do say so myself :]

As far as taste is concerned, YUMMY! I'm not usually a fan of lemon cake, but I am really happy with how these turned out!

Next time, I'd like the frosting to be a little bit thicker. It was a little too thin for my preference, but tasty nonetheless.

All in all, I'd say these were a smashing success! Please, please, PLEASE try this recipe yourself and let me know how it turns out! I'm dying to know!