- Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making delicious
strawberry cupcakes. So let's get started. First off, set your
oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Line two muffin tins with papers. And we're gonna get to mincing one cup of fresh strawberries. For these cupcakes, they're gonna be full of
fresh strawberry flavor. But strawberries are so notoriously wet, so we're adding just the right amount. And we can't have big pieces like this. They need to be minced up
so they're nice and small and distributed in the batter. It's so nice to bite into these cupcakes and have like just delicious
pieces of strawberry throughout with that frosting. You are not gonna believe the frosting. Nice small pieces, just like that. Once your strawberries are minced, and this is 220 grams, by the way, it's time to get your
dry ingredients together. So in a large bowl, I have three cups of all-purpose flour. That's 360 grams. I'm adding 1/2 a teaspoon
of salt for contrast. 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. This will react with the
acid in the strawberries. And two teaspoons of baking powder. I'm gonna give this a nice whisk to get it all worked together. Sometimes your flour can
be a little bit lumpy, so it's also nice to give it a whisk, just to make sure everything's broken up. Grab a mixer, and we're gonna get our
butter all whipped up. I'm using a stand mixer
with a paddle attachment. You could definitely do this with a hand mixer in a big bowl. I wanna show you, though,
just really quickly that my butter is nice and soft. One cup, or 226 grams,
right into the bowl. We're gonna cream this up on medium speed for a minute or less, just to break the butter up
and give it a head start. Now, we're gonna add 1 1/2 cups, or 300 grams, of granulated sugar. This gets whipped up on medium
high for about five minutes, until it is light and fluffy. And yes, I would scrape the
bowl down at least twice. While this finishes mixing up, I'm cracking three eggs into a bowl, just to make sure there's no shells. Five minutes later. Look at that beautiful color. It is a fluffy white
masterpiece of butter and sugar. That mixed a ton of air in, and it's really gonna give you a fluffy, amazing consistency. Back to mixing on medium. I'm adding those three
eggs in one at a time. And we're gonna mix and
scrape and mix and scrape. The eggs are notoriously liquidy, so they're not gonna mix really well. For these cupcakes, you have a choice. We have those beautiful
strawberries throughout, but strawberries lose their
color a bit when you bake, and a lot of us want to have an extra hint of like strawberry
flavor in the visual cue. So you can add a drop of
pink food coloring in, or like a drop of red food coloring in, and it'll give you like
a nice strawberry hue. This looks amazing. I just wanna show you that it's actually still fluffy and great. It's not broken. That looks fantastic because of all the mixing we did. To this, I'm adding in
a tablespoon of vanilla. Now, we're gonna step away from the mixer and combine milk and sour cream. I have 1/2 a cup of each. I just have to mix them together. The sour cream is gonna
give you some tang. And there's a little bit of an
acidic characteristic to it, so that'll also react
with the baking soda. And I talked about the food coloring. It's easier to add it into
the liquid than anything else. This is ultra-concentrated
gel food coloring, so you really just need
the tiniest little bit. So gel food coloring
is really concentrated, but it takes a bit of mixing
to mix it in sometimes, especially with thicker liquids. That looks great to me. It's like a nice pinky pink. Now, with the mixer running on low, I'm gonna add in my flour and
my sour cream milk mixture in three different batches, starting and ending with the dry. We do alternating batches
just so it mixes up nice. You don't wanna let too much
time elapse during the mixing, just because when you overmix batter, you're activating the gluten, and you can get like a
denser, gummy cupcake. So it's really just mixing
it until it's combined. And here, giving the bowl a scrape, just to make sure there's
no flour on the side. So mix your batter until
it's almost combined. You could let the mixer run on low, but I do not want to
overmix my batter at all. One cup of strawberries. And we're gonna fold that into the batter so they're evenly distributed. Oh my gosh, so pretty. I love it. And in folding those strawberries, you'll see some streaks of nonsense. Just mix them in. We're scooping out about 1/4 cup of batter into each of these cupcakes. Just distribute it evenly. This cupcake tin, nice and normal. This cupcake tin has a
sprinkling of rice in each well. I wanna see how much of
a difference it makes. If your cupcakes have a little bit of like butteriness on the bottom of them, this can just sop it up
so they're nice and dry. All right, I give myself a B minus for distributing batter evenly. I'm one cupcake short. Couple of 'em got
overfilled, but that's okay. These guys go into the oven one at a time. 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the centers are
springy to the touch. (timer ticks) My cupcakes are out of the oven. They look so cute and fluffy. While they finish cooling, we're gonna make the frosting. So you'll want six tablespoons, or 90 mLs, of a strawberry puree. I'm just popping these guys into a little mini food processor, but you could use a blender, too. That's about six large strawberries, but you could make a little bit more and use it for drinking. It's delicious. This will give you frosting a beautiful, soft pink color, too. Okay, nice and liquidy. Now, in a stand mixer fitted
with the whisk attachment, we're gonna add in our three sticks, or 339 grams, of room
temperature unsalted butter. I'm adding in 1/4 teaspoon of salt. And we're gonna mix this
on high for five minutes, until it is light and fluffy. When you're making an American
buttercream like this, it's so important to whip the
butter and really cream it up. Scrape that bowl down. And we're gonna go back to mixing. This is halfway there. Well, well, well. Look at this. Full of air, light and creamy. That's gorgeous. Now, we're gonna add in about
six cups of powdered sugar, a cup at a time. That's 720 grams in total. As that mixes, one
tablespoon of my strawberry. I'll scrape it down every two cups. Cup number two. Mix it up. And a tablespoon number two of the puree. By the way, this works with
so many different flavors. If you ever wanna make a
wonderful, really easy frosting, just try mixing in some
pureed strawberries, raspberries, even blueberries. Repeat until you've used
your six tablespoons of puree and six cups of powdered sugar. I'm adding in just one final tablespoon. I don't mind if my
buttercream is a little looser and doesn't have that like stiff texture. I actually prefer it that way. This looks amazing. My cupcakes are cooled. The frosting is done. I'm gonna grab my piping
bag and a star tip and get to work. If you let your frosting sit at all, it'll get a bit foamy. That's just the way it works. So you'll want to give
it a little bit of a whip for a few seconds, and it'll just smooth it right back out. Now, we're gonna pop
this into a piping bag. This is with an 846 tip,
one of my favorites. You could just do like a
little bit of frosting on top, but this tip is so delicious. So start in the middle. We're gonna work our way out And spiral it up. Perfect. And by the by, the rice totally worked. This is completely dry on the bottom, and this one without has a little bit of butter that seeped through. If you like, you can finish these off with a fresh strawberry. And just like that,
they're ready to enjoy. And in case you didn't know, the best way to enjoy a cupcake is as a delicious sandwich. This cupcake's been taken to the limit of just how much moisture and
delicious strawberry flavor you could pump into one single thing. It melts in your mouth. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe. And if you like this video, check out my cupcake playlist.
