I think we can all agree that this past year has been HARD! We miss our family, our friends, and all the things we took for granted before last March. If it’s been hard for us, I know there are some people out there that it’s been even harder for. Our dear friends, for example, have 3 kids, the youngest of whom is medically fragile and has spent more time in the hospital in his short 3 years then anyone should in a lifetime. We used to have weekly dinners with these friends, our oldest went to preschool together and are very close friends. Their middle and our youngest are just a few months apart and play so well together (and thankfully, while they are both spicy little things, theirs child is a good influence on our feral child…sorry guys, we know she’s taught her somethings). Anyway, it’s been over a full year since we have had any time with them and we miss them. We have been able to drop off treats, do a car parade, wish happy birthdays through a glass door, and a couple of facetime lunch dates, but all that pails in comparison with actually seeing them.
When my wonderful friend posted earlier this week (vacation week, remember?) about all 3 of the kids being sick and their middle child’s birthday this week I had to do something. She wasn’t asking (they very rarely ask for help, I honestly don’t know how they do it all), but it felt important to do SOMETHING to show them we were thinking of them, we miss them, and we will always be there for them…so we baked! After BEGGING her to let us take the cupcake making off her plate we got to work. The birthday girls only requests was that they were pink. I can get into that! We toyed with a few flavor ideas, first we started with strawberry, then we thought maybe strawberry lemon would be extra special, so we settled on that.
As usual the girls were more excited to work on something for someone they love. We got all the ingredients out, got the oven going, and got mixing! I must admit that when we are making something for someone that doesn’t live with us I’m slightly more controlling over the process. I still try to keep it light and fun while also making sure we don’t need to scrap the entire thing and start again. My kids are seasoned measurers so they still did that, but if yours aren’t you could do the measuring and then have them pour the ingredients in to the mixer/bowl to include them in that step. I also kept a close eye on the speed of the mixer, something I generally let the kids take charge of, but I didn’t want to overbeat the cupcake batter and have it get tough. Despite me being a little more present during this bake the kids still were happy and having fun.
We used our favorite King Arthur Baking vanilla cupcake recipe and tweaked it. (link below along with the tweaks we made) We made a double batch (we could have easily just split one batch in half but we wanted to try some too!) and once the vanilla batter was mixed split it into 2 bowls, flavoring one bowl with lemon zest and juice, the other with powdered freeze dried strawberries. We then put one scoop at a time of each flavor into the muffin tins until they were about 2/3 full, then used a toothpick to swirl the flavors gently together. We baked those, let them cool, and got to work making PINK strawberry frosting! (We made a super easy buttercream that I’ll link below from, you guessed it, King Arthur Baking!) The kids were in charge of frosting and decorating because I really wanted them to take ownership in part of these, and that would only effect the visual appeal, and honestly, they’re darn good little decorators for 8 and 5!
The cupcakes came out flavorful, although there are a few things I would change next time. I would use slightly more strawberry in the batter, probably 1 1/2 cups vs the one cup we used. I would also powder the strawberries that we put in the frosting versus chopping and mixing in in small pieces. I think that would give the frosting a bit bigger of a strawberry flavor. The lemon really ended up being the star of the show, but they were still delicious!
Here’s the link to the recipe: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/ultra-vanilla-cupcakes-with-easy-vanilla-frosting-recipe
Our changes went as followed:
1 cup of freeze dried strawberries (place them in the food processor and pulverize into a powder. Next time I would up this to 1 1/2 cups IF I was flavoring a full batch as we did. If you’re splitting a full batch into 2 flavors I suspect that 1 cup would do the trick)
2 Lemons, zested and juiced (Again, this was for a whole batch as we doubled the recipe. For a half batch I would use 1 lemon depending on taste. You could possibly use the zest of 2 lemons in a half batch, but the juice of 2 would likely make a half batch of batter too runny.)
After the batter is made split into 2 bowls, we left half the batter in the stand mixer and put the strawberries in there as I thought that would give it a more even mix. We hand mixed the lemon batter and it came out great!
Scoop one spoonful of each batter into the muffin tin (I know people like to use liners for their cupcakes but I don’t, I find them wasteful and annoying so I just grease the hell of the pan!) until they are about 2/3 full then use a toothpick to gently swirl the batter together. Bake as directed in the recipe above.
Here’s the link to the frosting recipe. This is my go to frosting when we need something simple and not terribly fussy. We added chopped freeze dried strawberries, but next time I would powder them in the food processor. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/quick-buttercream-frosting-recipe
Enjoy! Let us know if you make some, and what fun flavors or edits you make to the recipe to make it your own! BIG happy 5th birthday to our pink loving friend!
100 days of baking with kids 