White Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream

[The recipe for the cupcakes and the frosting can be found right here.]

How’s this for a lovely little summer cupcake?!  I really loved these – but they take some serious effort and a relatively lofty amount of time.  If you want a memorable cupcake for a summer picnic or barbeque, however, these would certainly fit the bill.  Be prepared to have everyone ask you how you got the cake so soft and light, though.  (I just said “magic.”)

It’s not magic, though!  The cupcakes are made with only cake flour – no all-purpose flour at all – and this is what gives them their soft, velvety tender crumb.  They truly do end up with the most amazing texture – unlike any cupcake I’ve had before.

The cake batter is made with whipped egg whites (among other things) so it’s definitely not a simple “throw everything in the mixer and then you’re done” batter.  It takes some time and effort and various bowls and techniques.  Once it’s done, however, it bakes up easily.

The Strawberry Buttercream is a simple variation on the basic Swiss Meringue Buttercream that is used elsewhere in the book.  To make it strawberry-flavored, strawberry jam that has been pureed in a food processor is folded in to the plain buttercream.

 

I had a lot of trouble getting the jam and the frosting to come together into one fluffy cohesive frosting, so I returned the bowl to the mixer with a whisk attachment and whipped it on high speed for just a little while.  This worked!

Then it is just a matter of frosting the individual cupcakes and topping with a strawberry.

I found that cutting a little bit off a side of the strawberry made it looked better as it sat on top of the cupcake.

The frosting is so good – all of the MSBH’s Swiss Meringue Buttercream frostings have been fabulous so far.  It’s light and fluffy and smooth and very subtle.  Not too sweet.  The strawberry flavor is amazing and you could easily change this up to be the flavor of any jam you can find – that’s all that that is used to flavor the frosting, afterall.

These are literally the lightest, tenderest cupcakes I’ve ever tasted.  Both the frosting and the cake are light as air, just the softest, most pillow-y cupcakes EVER!

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