Pink and full of fruity flavor, these strawberry cupcakes are a fun alternative to your standard vanilla or chocolate cupcakes. Top them with strawberry buttercream for double the deliciousness!
With Mother’s Day coming up, we’ve been thinking about all the ways we can treat the moms in our lives with something special. While manicures, brunches, and bookshop trips all seem fun, we’d also like to pretend we’re seven years old again and make our moms something…
So of course we want to make these strawberry cupcakes! They’re simple to bake from scratch and full of real strawberries. Plus, they’re a delightful pink color and oh-so-pretty. Pair them with our Mother’s Day party supplies and you’re sure to have a grateful momma on your hands, whether she’s 26 or 96!
Enjoy!
Recipe for Strawberry Cupcakes
To make strawberry cupcakes, you’ll need…
Ingredients:
For the cupcakes…
- Flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar: Your dry ingredients, are standard in a lot of baking recipes.
- Vanilla, eggs, buttermilk, cooking oil: These are your wet ingredients, and again, they’re standard in a lot of baking recipes! Nothing unusual here.
- Fresh strawberries: About a pound, since we’ll be using them both in the batter and as decoration.
For the strawberry buttercream…
- Softened butter, powdered sugar: Make sure the butter is unsalted, and the sugar’s been sifted to remove all the lumps. This helps form the creamy base texture of your buttercream…yum!
- Heavy whipping cream: The other half of the buttercream base. You can also use half-and-half or milk.
- Freeze dried strawberries: These, of course, provide the strawberry flavor for your buttercream. We use freeze dried strawberries because they provide the most flavor, believe it or not.
- Vanilla extract: In any recipe, vanilla extract tends to enhance and balance sweet flavors already present. You’ll want it here so the buttercream isn’t too sweet! (And yes, there is such a thing as too sweet!)
Utensils/Supplies:
For the cupcakes…
- Large mixing bowls: For mixing your wet ingredients, dry ingredients, etc. You’ll need about 3.
- Food processor: You’ll use this with your strawberries.
For the strawberry buttercream…
- Food processor: Again, you’ll use this to pulse your strawberries into a powder.
- Large mixing bowl: To beat together your butter, sugar, cream, etc.
How to Make Strawberry Cupcakes
Baking up these beautiful, fruit-flavored strawberry cupcakes is simple! We’ll guide you through it step-by-step.
To make the cupcakes…
First, set up your supplies and your dry ingredients (minus the sugar).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grab enough cupcake pans for 12 larger cupcakes. Line your pan with our gorgeous, grease-free pink cupcake liners. (Or whichever liners you prefer for the occasion…but we recommend ours, and you can copy our pictures that way.) Once all that’s done, you’ll want to whisk together your all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, then set it aside.
Next, mix your wet ingredients (and sugar).
In a separate bowl, beat your eggs until they’re slightly frothy. After, gradually add your granulated sugar. Don’t do it all at once…make sure to beat the eggs more for about 30 seconds after each addition! When you’ve added all your sugar, throw in your oil and vanilla and continue beating the egg mixture. Make sure to use a neutral oil for these cupcakes, like vegetable or canola!
Then mix your dry and wet ingredients.
Much like before, you’ll want to gradually add your dry ingredient mix to your wet ingredient mix. Again, don’t do it all at once! In-between the dry ingredients, you’ll want to pour your buttermilk in, too. You should have a smooth batter now.
Now you’ll add your strawberries!
Create a chunky puree in your food processor with 5-6 sliced strawberries, or enough until you get 1/3rd of a cup of puree. Set that aside. Take another handful of strawberries (3-4) and dice them into small, fine pieces. Then fold it all (puree and strawberry pieces) into the batter.
Finally, get that batter in your liners and bake those cupcakes!
You’ve now got yourself some tasty, tasty strawberry cupcake batter! Fill your liners with the batter…and if you need help filling them just perfectly, we have a tutorial about cupcake liners on our blog. From there, you’ll want to bake your cupcakes for 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick poked through the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.
Now it’s time to frost your cupcakes with strawberry buttercream!
To make the luscious Strawberry Buttercream frosting…
Head on over here and find all the details.
Last, it’s time to frost and decorate!
We used a large star tip for the buttercream, then adding our Berry Bliss Sprinkle Mix and Pink Sugar Rods, and a fresh strawberry on top.
Did you enjoy these homemade strawberry cupcakes?
They’re perfect for Mother’s Day…or any other occasion you need something pink and sweet! Comment down below with any thoughts you had on our strawberry cupcakes recipe and tutorial. Did you have any questions? Did you make any changes or substitutions to the recipe? We love hearing from our fellow bakers!
Other cupcakes you’ll adore on Sweets and Treats…
If it’s a cupcake-making kind of week for you (and when is it not?!), you might want to check out…
…or even just take a look at the cupcakes section of our blog!