Third post in and I’m already struggling with writer’s block. Lol. If you have ever written for any class ever in your life then you know the feeling. Its kind of like an inbetweeness when you can’t quite get your thoughts and the pen to connect. That is the exact feeling of inbetweeness I have when I think about cupcakes.

Jump straight to the recipe or keep reading for my first experience making it: [Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting – Cooking Classy]

It’s like… I love writing. Why does it torture me? I love cupcakes! They’re pretty. Pretty torturous.

I mean, look at it. All pink and unassuming. Sweet and tiny. I call BS!!! Cupcakes hate me!!! I mean, I totally jacked up the cake part of this recipe.

The consistency was pure awful. I’m sure that the main culprit was over mixing the batter my super happy i’m-making-pretty-cupcakes tail stood behind my hand mixer and just kept alternating dry and wet ingredients while the hand mixer is whizzing away. Then I realized the batter was separating.

I decided well maybe if I keep mixing…. By now my batter resembled like a wet cottage cheese.

But if you know me then you know these cupcakes were getting baked regardless. I been setting up all day for this. ALL the strawberries in the house are in this recipe. SOMEBODY is eating some strawberry cupcakes I don’t care who or what.

So I scooped out the batter in 1/3 cups into the muffin tan. I’m supposed to have 12 cupcakes. Well, I ended up with 10 and half which was a clear indication that I had royally screwed something up along the way.

*Shrugs* I am pushing forward anyway. So I put the weird batter in the oven and proceeded to the buttercream.

THE BEST PART OF THIS ENTIRE RECIPE:

This was my second time in life attempting to make my own buttercream. The first ending in disaster. I usually just rely on a creamcheese frosting that’s really just me putting some sugar and vanilla in softened cream cheese until I like it enough to top a cupcake or cookie.

The first attempt at buttercream came during our first year of marriage. I screwed it up so badly that I have subjected my husband to exactly 3,512 hours of Cupcake Wars to discover my flaw.

Well the answer to the question is the 2P’s: Patience and Powdered Sugar (also known as icing sugar and not something I generally just keep around the house). The buttercream came out beautifully. I actually have to rate the recipe twice because this buttercream was better than anything my husband and I had tasted out of a grocery store bakery or pre-made and better than a lot of upscale bakeries.

Cooking Classy’s finished product.

The cupcakes came out overly moist and dense and feel underdone even though the tops are brown and they stayed in the oven for thirty minutes. To review: I’m sure I over-mixed the batter; it may have been too wet because of the strawberries added directly in to the batter; and I scooped too much batter per tin. They were awful.

Grade on Cake Recipe: 1

I’m debating trying the recipe again to see if I can approve upon these flaws buuut, we did end up eating some of the cupcakes because the frosting was good enough to bathe in so I’m no longer craving cupcakes. Looking back over to my savory friends. Lol.

Grade on Buttercream Recipe: 4+

But just to add insult to injury, including having a bad bake, I was stupid enough attempt to store the five leftover cupcakes in the fridge with the frosting on them. So now I have super dense cupcakes with deliciously sweet strawberry butter on top. The consistency of the frosting was ruined by the hardening of the butter in the buttercream recipe. Makes perfect sense in hindsight.

Remember that I am NEW to baking and not TRUE to baking. This was a classic case of misstudy. I do not blame the recipe but I rated it according to my first time experience. It was still a super fun and educational experience! Check out Jacyln’s blog at Cooking Classy and start from scratch yourself. I will absolutely be rating another one of her recipes. Maybe you will have a better experience with these strawberry cupcakes than I did.

(Btw, this wasn’t writing’s block, I just struggled to come up with the words to write how much fun I had making a recipe that ended so badly. Lol.)

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