CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES W/ STRAWBERRY FROSTING

March 7, 2017 Cakes/Cupcakes/Muffins, Desserts, recipes

I love chocolate covered strawberries and eat them more often than I should.

Sometimes I am so impatient that I just melt me a big old bowl of chocolate and grab a handful of juicy red strawberries and start dipping. This girl is not waiting for some chocolate to harden on a strawberry.

My love for this wonderful flavor combination is the reason for these chocolate cupcakes & starwberry cupcakes.

For the chocolate cake, I use the same recipe that I use for my Hot Fudge Sundae cupcakes. It’s the recipe that I use for almost all of my chocolate cupcakes. It’s super quick and easy and starts out with a chocolate cake mix.

I usually prefer making my own chocolate cupcake mix from a white cake mix and adding cocoa. You can find that recipe HERE. It is one of my most pinned recipes and it honestly taste like homemade. As long as you have some type white/butter/chocoalte came mix in your panty, your good to go.

Of course, you can always make your chocolate cupcakes completely from scratch and add the chocolate pudding and hot fudge sauce to it. It’s your cupcakes so you should make it your way!

The secret to these delicious strawberry & chocolate cupcakes is the freeze dried strawberries I used in the frosting. It taste so much better using real fruit and I plan to start using freeze dried fruit in all of my recipes.

Freeze dried fruit works so much better than fresh fruit since you don’t have to worry about extra liquid making everything soggy. Plus, you have the taste of real strawberries in every bite and not some powdery-sugary artifical flavor.

Drumroll please……

INGREDIENTS

1.5oz of freeze-dried strawberries ( I used two .7oz bags but you can add more/less flavor to taste) Please note that this is not 7 oz but .7oz!

*1 cup butter, softened

4 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup of Milk – use more if frosting is too thick adding small amounts at a time

DIRECTIONS

1. Put freeze dried strawberries into a food processor to create a powder or use a Ziploc bag and smash with rolling pin or what ever you have on hand that will work. Set aside.

2. Beat butter and/or shortening together until smooth.

3. Add 2 cups of powdered sugar and mix until smooth

4 Add your powdered strawberries to mixture and continue to add remaining powdered sugar and mix until smooth.

CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRIS

You don’t need a recipe for chocolate covered starwberries but here are a couple of tips that have found made a huge difference:

After washing the strawberries, lay them on a towel to completely dry. Pat with a towel/papertowel if needed. Get them as dry as possible.

Use the best chocolate you can afford. I have worked for the state for over 20 years to the best I can afford is not even the good stuff at Walmart. With that being said, I have found a that using Candiquick chocolate taste, and covers better than the cheaper almond bark and is only slightly more expensive.

Add more milk or powdered sugar if needed to obtain desired texture.

*Note: You can use 1/2 Cup butter & 1/2 cup vegetable shortening instead of all butter or, if you want to go dairy-free, use only shortening. I use the crisco shortening sticks from Walmart.

If you can’t find freeze dried strawberries in your local stores, you can order them from Walmart. My local Walmart doesn’t have the variety that many Walmarts have so I order stuff from them all of the time and have it delieverd to my house. Of course, you can usually have it shipped to the store for free.