Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Icing

I went to Farmer's Market this morning and I saw these beautiful strawberries and I thought of making strawberry desserts. Let's start making the strawberry puree. Using a medium saucepan, combine strawberries, sugar, and water. Turn the heat to medium. Continue stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Simmer it for seven minutes or until it becomes thicker. We need a thicker puree since we will be using this for our buttercream icing. Turn off the heat and cool it down for a few minutes before transferring it to a food processor. Puree until smooth. Transfer the puree to a bowl. Set it aside. Preheat the oven first to 180 degrees Celsius. Quick reminder, since I'm using convection oven, don't use convection when cooking cakes, quick breads, custards, or soufflés. It means don't turn on the fan inside the oven. The movement of the air from the fan and exhaust system can cause them to cook unevenly and to rise less impressively. So I'm just going to use the bottom element that is enough heat to cook my cupcakes. Let's cut some fresh strawberries for our cupcake batter. In a medium bowl, combine together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. And always sift your flour. Set it aside. Using another clean bowl, add the butter. Set your mixer on low speed and beat the butter until creamy and light. Turn it off. Add the sugar into three parts. Continue beating it, and at this stage, increase the speed to medium. Add the last part of the sugar. Continue beating it until it's light and fluffy. Turn off the mixer. The butter and sugar is creamed when it has almost doubled in mass, like this. Add the eggs slowly. Continue beating it until well combined. Fold in the dry ingredients in two parts to wet ingredients. Always make sure you scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl. Add the milk into two parts. Now for the last part of the milk. Mix it again. Add one fourth cup of strawberry puree, strawberries, and vanilla. Again, make sure you scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl just to make sure everything is well incorporated. Our cupcake batter is ready. Get a cupcake pan and cupcake paper. I will be using three ounce cupcake papers. I'm going to put one fourth cup of cupcake butter into each cupcake paper. We finish our cupcake batter. For this recipe, it's good for 12 cupcakes. Bake this in the oven for 20 to 22 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the cupcake pan and transfer to a cooling rack. This will prevent from overcooking the cupcakes. While cooling down our cupcakes, let's start making our strawberry buttercream frosting. Let's start with the softened butter. Set your mixer to medium speed and whisk the butter until light and fluffy. Turn it off. Add the powdered sugar. Mix it first before turning on your hand mixer. Scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl. Continue to whisk until smooth and creamy. Taste the texture of the buttercream frosting. It's already creamy. I can no longer taste the sandy texture of the powdered sugar. Now let's add the strawberry puree. Mix it again until everything is well combined. Turn it off. Remove the extra buttercream from the whisk. Scrape the side and the bottom of the bowl just to make sure the color is even. Get a piping bag and I'm going to use a large star piping tip. Place the piping tip inside. Cut the piping bag tip. You push the piping bag inside the piping tip and fill it with the buttercream frosting. Make sure you finish everything. Now it's time to decorate our cupcakes. Now pull it down and make sure you push all the buttercream frosting all the way down to the piping tip. Start piping the frosting. The buttercream frosting recipe is perfect for 12 cupcakes as well. Now let's decorate it with fresh strawberries. The cupcake is so moist. It tastes fresh because of the strawberries that we put in the cupcake. The buttercream frosting is perfectly sweet, creamy, and smooth. All the flavors are well balanced. Hope you try this recipe and I'm sure you're going to love the strawberry cupcakes.