MarMOND!

WOW, it has been over a year since my last post and I am back due to the fact that I have yet another summer of NOTHING to do!  SO let's kick off 2011 with a REAL recipe like a REAL food blog!

After watching "Cupcake Wars" on the food network, I was instantly inspired to try making a marshmallow whipped frosting since one of the contestants made some type of marshmallow frosting.  So after this inspirational moment, I decided to make a Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Cupcake with an Almond whipped cream topping.  What, Marshmallow?  Anyways, I have been in a homemade whipped cream mood lately and wasted many hours brainstorming a good combination.  BUT I also wanted to use greek yogurt in my cake since I've tried it in a healthy cheesecake I made once and it has a super rich and creamy flavor.  So finally I found a recipe for a Fresh Strawberry Yogurt CAKE and just modified the recipe to make it into fun cupcakes!

Cake:

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 oz. plain or vanilla greek yogurt (I did half plain and half vanilla - vanilla is slightly sweeter)

12 oz. fresh strawberries, diced

1 cup powdered sugar

Frosting:

(I just made up my own recipe so I'm not sure about the measurements but I will give you an estimate - but really you should just add ingredients and keep tasting until it tastes good!)

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/3 cup finely chopped almonds

What to do:

~ Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

~ Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt then set aside.

~ Blend together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs one at a time and stir in lemon juice.  Alternate beating in the flour mixture from earlier and the yogurt, mixing until everything is blended together.

~ Toss strawberries and gently mix them into the batter so they don't get mushy

~ For the frosting, make sure the whipped cream is super cold and stick the bowl and whisk you're going to use in the freezer to make sure those are super cold too.  

~ Once they're all chilled up, start whisking the whipped cream at a high pace and once you begin, don't stop or else the whipped cream might loose it's fluffiness.  Early on in the whipping process, slowly dust in the powdered sugar while you're whisking and throw in the almond extract whenever.

~ Whipping the cream sometimes takes forever but don't over-whip!  Whip until it "peaks" as in the look like little mountains when you pull the whisk out.  And once it's done, fold in the almond pieces into the cream.  Frosting DONE!

So now that you have both the cake and frosting done, you can decorate your cupcakes however you desire.  To put the frosting on, since I don't have a piping bag, I just used a sandwich sized baggie instead.  You just put some frosting into the baggie, seal it so there's no air, and the twist the top corner so all the frosting goes to one of the bottom corners, and then cut off a little hole from the bottom corner the frosting is on and there you go!  Pipe away!  Yay!