You Can't Always Get What You Want

So far, I'm having a blast DIY-ing things around the house and keeping up with this blog. After my key lime episode last weekend, I decided to try making another batch of cupcakes. I decided to try making a white chocolate cupcake with a white chocolate and strawberry cream cheese frosting. Um, delicious. Here was the picture on the website where I got the recipe. (The picture contains the link)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
4 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 ounce white chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 teaspoons heavy cream
3 – 4 cups powdered sugar

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup strawberries, mashed by hand or with food processor
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
3 – 4 cups powdered sugar

I was especially intrigued by the piping of the frosting. Since the recipe calls for two different kinds of icing, the website said to put the icing into two different, small piping bags, and then place BOTH of those bags into a larger bag with a star tip. I loved the look of it!

The cake itself was very easy to make and in no time my cupcakes were happily baking away in my oven. When they came out they were a fantastic light color-yummy!

As they were cooling, I got started on the icing. The white chocolate cream cheese icing was very similar to a recipe that I had made in the past for both my white chocolate macadamia cupcakes and my carrot cake cupcakes, so that was a "piece of cake." The strawberry cream cheese, on the other hand, turned out to be another battle entirely. I followed the recipe exactly, putting my strawberries through the food processor and combining all of the ingredients in their precise, methodical order (I'm definitely a 'Hermione Granger' Rule Follower and follow recipes EXACTLY), but my frosting ended up sticky, runny, and altogether not good eats (as Alton would say). I realized that mixing the strawberries with an electric mixer created a runny, almost pureed sauce instead of a nice thick frosting, so I started over. This time, I mixed everything by hand with the exception of the cream cheese and butter. Look how pretty the strawberries looked in the food processor (I may or may not have liked the bowl afterwards).

The end product was still more runny than I would have liked, but I found reading reviews online that many strawberry cream cheese frostings end up that way. Now it was time for the more difficult part: piping the goods. I gathered my materials and hoped for the best.

IT WAS A DISASTER! The bits of strawberry seemed to get stuck in the bag and I could not get the two icings to combine into one, perfectly split swirl. I was heartbroken, tired, and exhausted. I finally settled on using my spatula to plop some of the strawberry icing down on the top of the cupcake (since it was too runny to hold a stiff swirl), and using my piping bags to create a swirl on top of the strawberry icing. It was certainly not the look I was going for, but sometimes baking just isn't as pretty as I would like it to be.

Overall the taste was great! The cupcakes themselves were nice and moist. Next time I think I would use the strawberry icing to fill the inside of the cake since they didn't taste as "strawberry" as I would have liked. Plus, since the strawberry icing was runny it would be fine nesting inside my cupcakes!  Even though they didn't look like the glamorous cupcakes I wanted, they still certainly tasted yummy!