Alright- I love "from scratch" cooking just as much as the next girl who loves "from scratch" cooking, but sometimes I just want to take the easy way out.
Every once in a while on a Sunday, one of my old roommates from PlymouthHaus, RoachyPooh, and I plan a big potluck style meal for some of our friends. We call it Soul Food Sunday, and it's a tradition going all the way back to when we lived together. RoachyPooh is one of my very best friends, and my favorite person to be in the kitchen with. Funny thing, though- She didn't like me when we first met. How could that be?!? Well, we've gotten over that, and I am sooooo glad.
In case you're wondering, here she is with a basket of her AMAZING Heirloom Fried Chicken:
Isn't she adorable?
Anyway, since we were having soul food, I decided I was making some biscuits and gravy, which you may recall is one of my specialties, but what about my newest obsession, cupcakes? I wanted to keep them in general the southern food theme, but I didn't want to make Red Velvet. I mean, it's good and all, but in my opinion, a bit overrated. Maybe I just haven't had any really good red velvet cake?
Then it hit me, Strawberry Lemonade. Perhaps that's not very southern, but to my northwestern sensibilities, it seems like it would be very Virginian. Which is in the south, right? After looking about the interwebz for the perfect recipe, I found this one at Cafe Zupas, which intrigued me, both for the soda pop, and the cake-mix hack. I feel like a renegade when I refuse to use the directions on the box!
If you've looked at the recipe, you'll no doubt notice there is no strawberry to be found. That was easy, though, I just swapped the lemon-lime soda for some Nesbitt's Strawberry. YUM!
Take a gander at the finished product - pretty!
And here's how I did it...
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line your muffin pan with the cupcake liners of your choice.
Step 2: Collect ingredients.
Step 3: Combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs and oil in large bowl.
Step 4: Curse the day you decided to use the hand mixer because there is no way it will handle this batter.
Step 5: Transfer the whole shebang to your stand mixer.
Step 6: NOW you can beat it for 3 minutes, whew!
Step 7: Slowly mix in the soda pop, and beat for 1 minute more.
Step 8: Fill your lined muffin tins about 2/3 full. Don't forget to drip a bit on the pan. This is important!
Step 9: Bake those suckers for 30 minutes, or until the toothpick test comes out clean.
Step 10: Let your precious cakes cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove them to a cooling rack.
Step 11: In your clean large bowl (you washed it already, right?) whip up a batch of cream cheese frosting. (I used this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/index.html).
Step 12: While your frosting is beating, cut up and mash some strawberries in a medium bowl.
Step 13: In a wee bowl, zest and juice 1 lemon.
Step 14: Now your frosting should be done. Divide it, and put half in the bowl with the mashed berries. Then pour the lemon juice and zest in the big bowl of frosting. Mix those babies up. Cheat a bit, and add a bit of yellow food coloring to the lemon frosting.
Step 15: Fill up your piping bags fitted with a medium round tip. I had planned on trying to swirl the frostings together, but their consistencies were way too different, but I really didn't want to add any more sugar. So... I used 2. Voila! Success.
Step 16: Now, if you haven't done it (and I guess you probably haven't, since I forgot to tell you earlier), make some strawberry pie filling, and lemon pie filling. Or you could do what I did, and make strawberry filling, and buy lemon pie filling.
Step 17: Now your cupcakes have cooled and are ready for assembly! First, you want to core them. What I do is cut a cone from the cake, with a paring knife. Then I trim the bottom of the cones so that I now have a cap of cake.
Step 18: Pop a bit of the trimmed cone cast offs into your mouth, then continue.
Step 19: Now, spoon some of your fillings into the cavities of the cupcakes. I decided to do them separately, but I'm sure you could put 'em in together.
Step 20: Pop the caps (gangsta' style) on top of the filled cakes.
Step 21: Starting with the lemon frosting on the outside top edges, build a frosting dam. Then fill the empty space with the strawberry frosting.
Step 22: Wait ten minutes to build anticipation, have a glass of water or wine, peel the paper off one of those bad boys, and eat the dang thing!
And, in case you want to see the rest of Soul Food Sunday June 2009 spread, here you go:
We've got RoachyPooh's Heirloom Fried Chicken, C-Momma's Green Bean Casserole, Red's Savory Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Filthy J's Hand Cut Watermelon, Bloody Ethel's Biscuits Supreme, Sausage Country Gravy, and of course Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes. The Historian also brought her Fabled Pear Apple Pie, but it came after the photo shoot, so you'll just have to see her work another time!
Rating
3 outta 5 for great taste, but a little fussy for a Cake Mix Hack.
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