It was sunny yesterday in Seattle, so as I thought of cupcake flavor recipes, naturally I thought of strawberry lemonade!So that was my first idea, but when I got to Safeway, I had a feeling they wouldn't have strawberry extract...aand they didn't. They did have raspberry though. So I figured, Well what the heck. People have raspberry lemonade too, right? Right.
Here's the recipe:
Ingredients
1 cup butter softened
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups of fresh pureed raspberries
3/4 cup sour cream
2 tsp raspberry extract
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 Tb baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
juice from quarter of a lemon
dash of salt
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Beat the butter, eggs, and sugar in one bowl, while slowly adding the extracts, lemon juice, sour cream, and raspberry puree.
3. Mix the solids (flour, baking powder and soda, salt) and sift around for a bit.
4. Slowly whisk the butter mixture with the solids until the batter is thick but runny
5. Fill your baking cups in a cupcake pan with an Asian soup spoon or a 1/4 liquids cup-spoon
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes (depending on how runny the batter is. If it's a thicker batter, you'll bake it for less. If it's more liquidy, you'll need to bake it for more). Once you stick a toothpick in to test and it comes out clean, then you're good to take them out and let them cool.
Onto the frosting..
Raspberry Lemonade Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened (leave it out in room temperature for like 2 hours)
1 8oz package of spreadable cream cheese (I used reduced fat)
2 tsp raspberry extract
1 lemons worth of juice and zest
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 cups of powdered/confectioner's sugar
1. Beat the butter and cream cheese, until it's a whipped, full integrated mixture
2. Slowly add half of the sugar, 1/2 cup at a time while still beating with an electric mixer
3. At the halfway mark, add the extracts and lemon. Continue to beat for a couple more minutes.
4. Slowly add the rest of the sugar, still 1/2 cup at a time until complete.
And voila!
They turned out great, although I had a few ideas for the next batch: more sugar (since raspberries aren't too sweet), dash of lemon extract in the actual cake mix, and buttermilk frosting instead of cream cheese (since cream cheese is already a little sour, so lemoning it up probably isn't ideal).
