My endeavors in baking, our bulldog and generally ruling the world. Now with a baby!: Strawberry shortcake cupcakes

To celebrate the season opening of our favorite Strawberry patch I had to make some kind of cupcake involving Strawberries. I hit the jack pot when I found this one in the cupcake deck.

I read through the recipe (as always) prior to making these and thought that it looked pretty straight-forward, and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about over making sponge cake. Well let me tell you, it's kind of a bitch. Maybe it was my circumstances: trying to make them mini, and not having the proper tools for the job (specifically jumbo cupcake liners) but these were by far my most interesting project. Even when I've gotten the recipe wrong, or over baked, cupcakes before they have never come out so.... Disappointing. Sponge cake is Mr. T's favorite and I think that fact is the only thing that kept him from realizing that my sponge cake was sub par. Or maybe it was the heaping spoon fulls of strawberries and whipped cream... Don't tell him okay?

Even if they did turn out less than fabulous in my opinion, the flavor was good. Mr. T will be taking the remaining cupcakes that he doesn't eat to work tomorrow to get a real reading, I'll update this post after I get some feedback. In the mean time, see for yourself:

Strawberry Short Cake Cupcakes from the Cupcake Deck

you'll need 8 cups of strawberries, cleaned, de-stemmed and sliced

start by beating the eggs and sugar

and then adding the dry ingredients, followed by the warmed milk

I couldn't find extra large muffin tin liners in my town, so instead I improvised by cutting squares of parchment paper. It worked out pretty well.

this recipe was supposed to yield 12 extra large cupcakes.

the actual yield was 10 and I probably could have used a regular sized muffin tin.

Here's where it got a little worrisome:

notice the color and consistency as compared to the next shot

this is from the same bowl as above.

The ingredients had settled while I prepped the cups, I ended up with my vanilla and almond oil sitting in the bottom of my bowl. Luckily, the taste turned out the same in each batch. *phew!* The batter is very thin, definitely be sure to mix well and often!