My First Strawberry Cupcake....flopped
Baking By robbynjaye Updated 27 Mar 2011 , 9:53pm by sugardugar
While making my strawberry cupcakes, I was super excited b/c the strawberries were pureed so nicely. They were very sweet and perfect to be in a cake. I took a taste of the batter before scopping into the cups and it was a perfect strawberry taste.
tick tick tick, waiting for the cupcakes to finish seemed like forever. Until I realized, they are not rising. I finally took them out after like 40 minutes and opened one, it was all gooey inside 
what in the world did I do wrong? Was there too much liquid in the batter? Should I have taken out the milk or the oil?
I'm trying it again this weekend only I will try folding cut strawberries into the batter last draining as much juice as possible.
If you put the pureed strawberries in the batter in addition to all of the other liquid without making any reductions - then my guess would be it was too much liquid. If they were just cut strawberries it probably wouldn't have been an issue (?). But if you wanted to try the pureed again I would try adjusting the amounts of other liquid comparable to how much liquid is in the puree (thicker/less juicy puree I wouldn't reduce a lot, but if it's 'juicier' you'd have to reduce more).
Yes, in doing more research, I realized the juice from the strawberries as well as the milk was way too heavy. I'm going to try it again both ways, keeping the milk and just folding in cut strawberries and then pureeing the strawberries and cutting down some milk or even subbing the strawberries for the milk.
I never worked with fruit before so this is all new to me!
Thanks!
When dealing with berries in a cake all you really need is the pulp of the fruit - not the juice otherwise you will add way too much liquid. If you want to make an awesome, and I mean AWESOME strawberry cake, try one of two methods:
Get fresh strawberries and chop them into large pieces. Put them in the freezer overnight. The next day, pull them out and put in a wire strainer over a bowl and let them thaw. The freezing crystalizes the water content so when you defrost them the water will thaw and drip out. You are left with a highly concentrated pulp.
If you don't have a day to prep, get fresh strawberries and chop them really finely. Then push them thru a mesh strainer to try and get out as much of the liquid as you can. You should be left with the pulp and the seeds. You'll need more strawberries then the 1st method, but it works too.
With both methods, use less strawberries in your batter then you think.
If you want to kick up the strawberry flavor even more you can take the left-over juice, add some sugar and reduce it down over the stove into a simple syrup and soak your cake, OR use the juice in your buttercream to make strawberry buttercream.
This works especially well with raspberries and blackberries too.
Good luck!
Jen
I made my first strawberry cupcake on Thursday. I used the recipe from Sprinkles (as found on Oprah). The recipe says you can use fresh or frozen and just puree it in a food processor. Because of a frosting failure I wasn't taking chances, though I used frozen (left to thaw to room temp and drain) after I pureed them I pushed excess liquid through a strainer and used as much of the fruit without the liquid as I could. I thought they tasted really good when they were done, though a little dense (I am reading that may be my lack of creaming the butter and sugar as long as I should have...) but overall not a disaster. So that was my recent experience.
I made strawberry cupcakes the other day via a doctored cake mix and they were sooo good!!!! i have had 3 more orders for them since!
-1 white cake mix
-1 pack gelatin
-1 cup fresh berries
-1 tsp baking powder
-a couple of drinks of strawberry flavour oil (optional, i just wanted it a strong flavour)
Pre-heat to 400, reduce to 350 and bake for 20 mins then start checking!
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