I thought I'd share a couple of pics of my first attempt at a celebration cupcake for last weeks Iron Cupcake competition. I tried to make a strawberry and pink champagne cupcake (I used rose prosecco in this attempt as didn't want to waste pink champagne!) as I thought it was a perfect celebration cupcake and also quite seasonal as I found some lovely strawberries in Waitrose.
I looked through some recipes and decided to opt for the Sprinkles Strawberry cupcake recipe features on Martha Stewart's website as it had a video and looked ever so easy. The recipe was easy to follow, I substituted the milk for champagne and the cake actually worked out quite well - except it was very sweet, In fact a little too sweet for me but still perfectly tasty - a moist strawberry sponge.
I used Sprinkles strawberry frosting recipe, substituting the vanilla for some more prosecco and adding slightly less strawberry and a wee bit more booze. I'm not sure if it was because it was the hottest day of the year or because I'd faffed about with the recipe but this frosting just would NOT work. I mixed it, without overmixing but nothing happened, it just stayed kinda gloopy. The recipe says it should be dense and creamy like ice cream but it was more runny and tasty like a strawberry soup. I added a touch more icing sugar, which did nothing much except make it sweeter...grrr. I was getting more and more harassed as it was hot enough to bake a bloody cake in my kitchen without the oven so once it was thick enough to just dollop on I gave up and did just that. It kind of set once on the cupcake but it in no way resembled the frosting that Sprinkles have on their cupcakes. The second photo above was taken a little while after I dolloped the frosting on - when I took the case off it kinda oozed down the side of the cake - as you can see they don't particularly look like the pic below that came with the recipe.
Although the frosting did not set, and it was a little sweet, it was flavoursome and reminded me of strawberry ice cream.
I would probably make these again but follow the recipe properly and just make plain old strawberry cupcakes rather than try to faff around with them!
