Strawberry-Basil Cupcake

 Inspired by any number of delicious things I’ve eaten lately, and a tumblr post on making mint sugar.

 Fresh strawberries and basil, pound cake and cream cheese frosting. These were perfect for the summer – sweet, lightly frosted and loaded with fruit. There’s more strawberries hiding in the middle of that cupcake.

Basil sugar in the food processor

Basil Sugar

Herb infused sugars are incredibly easy to make. It is as simple as the herbs, the sugar and a food processor. Mint, basil, rosemary, anise – any flavor that goes well with sweet can be used here, though the amounts needed will vary.

Basil sugar was: 2/3rds cup of granulated sugar and half a bunch of fresh basil (approximately ½ cup)

Start by adding the sugar into food processor and then add basil a few leaves at a time until basil and sugar are completely blended – sugar should be green and clump together when pressed with a finger. This will make way more basil sugar that you need. Save it, put it on your waffles.

Basil Macerated Strawberries

Basil macerated strawberries

Macerating fruit makes it sweeter and softer and can add the flavor(s) of the other elements used in the maceration process.

Normally maceration is done with a liquid (it’s like marinating, for fruit!) – you soak fruit in a liquid (vinegar, wine, juice, syrup, any liquid with a flavor will do). But because my strawberries were going to be sitting on top of cake, I didn’t want them to be squishy, or to have them make the cake soggy. So instead, I used sugar  – the sugar pulls the liquid out of the strawberries, leaving them sweeter, tarter and with a hint of basil. I used the basil sugar I made, but any granulated sugar will work.

Basil macerated strawberries: 1 lb strawberries, 2 tbsp basil sugar, 1/3rd cup fresh basil – Chop strawberries into small irregular pieces. Chop basil finely – pieces should be smaller than ¼ inch. Mix strawberries, basil, sugar in bowl. Chill for at least half an hour.

Cake, Frosting and Decorating

Pound Cake fresh from the oven

Pound Cake

Pound cake is boring. It’s buttery, it’s sweet, it’s dense, and there isn’t much more to it.

Which makes it the perfect delivery mechanism for everything else delicious in the world.

Pound cake: Use your favorite pound cake recipe – or use a box mix, but add a tablespoon of vanilla. Fill your cupcake tins only halfway – pound cake rises more than regular cake. Ignore the baking instructions if your pound cake recipe is for a regular loaf pan or cake pan – cupcakes are smaller, so they bake faster, and need a lower temperature to not burn. I baked at 350 F for 15 minutes. Your oven may vary, so check after 10 minutes. The tops of your cupcakes should be gold and tan and a butter knife inserted into the center of a cupcake should come back clean.

Why a butter knife instead of a toothpick? A larger surface area means I am more likely to get an accurate check if the middle of my cake is still unbaked. Knives are also longer, which means I can check from further away, and not risk burning my fingers on the oven rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Like pound cake, cream cheese frosting is kind of boring. Classic, but boring. And like the cake, it’s a perfect accompanist to other flavors. It’s sweet and tangy enough to pair up with the tart-sweet intensity of the strawberries, and doesn’t drown out the basil.

I have a standard recipe I use every time:

• 8oz cream cheese. Chilled – take it straight from the fridge to the mixer, stop to spoon it into smaller lumps if you want.
• ½ cup butter. Room temperature – you want it to blend with the cream cheese, so it has to be soft.
• 1.5 cups powdered sugar.
• 1 tsp vanilla extract.
• Mix cream cheese and butter together in a mixer on low to medium speed (your mixer’s speed may vary) until blended – you should not be able to see individual pieces of cream cheese or butter.
• Set the mixer to slow and add sugar in small increments (¼ cup at a time or less) until sugar and butter/cream cheese are blended.
• Add vanilla, continue to mix until the vanilla is entirely mixed into the frosting.
• Chill for 10-15 min before frosting. You want the frosting soft enough to work with, but not so soft that it will slide around on the cupcake.

Filling and Decorating

While your frosting is chilling in your fridge, you want to setup a place for all those strawberries to go. With the rounded handle of a spatula (or your thumb, or anything else about that size and rounded and clean) press holes into the centers of the cupcakes- you can push down pretty far, because the pound cake should compress, preventing you from pushing down to the cupcake wrapper.

Using a ‘petal’ frosting tip in a pastry bag ( I used a Wilton #104 frosting tip, but any similarly shaped tip should work fine ), pipe cream cheese frosting in a ring around outer edge of the cupcake – depending on how strongly you squeeze the bag, you should make 3-5 ‘rings’ – frosting height should be approx ¾ths of an inch.

Cream cheese frosting tends to be softer than buttercream – if your frosting is very soft, chill cupcakes for 15-20 minutes before adding strawberries.

Carefully spoon strawberries into the middle of the cupcake/frosting “ring” – start with smaller pieces, then add larger pieces to the top. The strawberries should rise over frosting, they’re the main flavor of the cupcake, the more you add, the better.

Sprinkle basil sugar with fingers or a small spoon over frosting and strawberries. The sugar will be clumpy and irregular in size – I used my fingers, to get a more even distribution of sugar over the entire cupcake.

Strawberry Basil and Blackberry Mojito Cupcakes

The finished product (and blackberry mojito cupcakes as well – to be featured at a unknown later date on this very blog!) –>

This made 15 cupcakes, plus an exceptionally large amount of leftover basil sugar, and about a cup of extra strawberries.