Strawberry Success

I love cupackes, I love fruit, and therefore I love cupcakes made with fruit.  However, until recently, I have NOT gotten along well with frosting made with fruit.  I love how it tastes, but making it has been quite a challenge.  Because of the high water content in fruit, especially strawberries, mixing it into a buttercream or meringue becomes difficult.  The water doesn't mix with the butter and it separates into a gooey mess.  I have resorted to just frosting my cupcakes with a plain vanilla buttercream to avoid the disaster.  However, my mom recently suggested I try freeze dried fruit.  It worked.  I had these in the house, so I just took a pack of them and put them in the cuisinart.  The result was a very fine powder that blended perfectly into the buttercream cream cheese frosting.  You could also add in some strawberry extract, but I didn't have any on hand.  The result not only looked appealing, but tasted really excellent- fruit frosting has been conquered.

 Strawberry Frosting

(enough for 12 cupcakes or so)

4 tablespoons butter, softened (1/2 stick)

8 tablespoons cream cheese (1/2 8 oz pack)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups confectioners sugar

6-8 freeze dried strawberries

Cream butter and cream cheese in electric mixer on high until fluffy (at least 2-3 minutes).  Add sugar a half cup at a time until fully combined.  Add in vanilla and mix thoroughly.

Place strawberries in a cuisinart and blend until they become a fine powder.  Add two tablespoons of the powder to the mixing bowl and beat on high until fully combined.  If desired, add more strawberry powder or strawberry extract to taste.

Enjoy your easy and delicious strawberry frosting! (It goes great on these cupcakes.)

Margaret