Strawberry Margarita Cupcakes: rich, buttery, sweet and citrus cupcakes, great for a spring get together.

The market near our house had some awesome local organic strawberries with some great flavor, so I thought I’d try some to make some strawberry margarita cupcakes for a spring party we were going to. First I googled a recipe for strawberry margarita cupcakes, and found one on The Baker Chick’s blog. I opted to skip her filling recipe and make my own frosting instead, but I used her cupcake recipe.

**Note: The recipe yields about 11 cupcakes, so I doubled it so that I would have enough to bring to the party. Recipe below is original for 11-12 cupcakes. 

Receipe from http://www.thebakerchick.com/2014/04/strawberry-margarita-cupcakes/

Ingredients:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 small limes, zested and juiced
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk- room temperature

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325F. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes.
Blend in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the lime zest, lime juice and vanilla.
With the mixer on low speed, mix in the dry ingredients in three additions alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Beat each addition just until incorporated.
Divide the batter between the prepared cupcake liners, filling each about ¾ full. Bake 20-24 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

The cupcakes turned out rich and dense. A little denser than I like, but I think the denseness comes from all the buttermilk and butter in the cupcakes (not the healthiest, I know, but fat is flavor right?). The buttermilk together with the lime juice gave them that tangy lime citrus flavor that they needed.

For the frosting, I pureed some strawberries in the food processor with lime juice and a quality silver tequila, and used that for the liquid to mix in with the 1 and a half sticks of butter and about 2/3 of a 32 oz bag of powdered sugar. (I never measure stuff with frosting, I just make it to taste based on those ratios of powdered sugar and butter and a liquid mixed in to the right consistency and taste).

I have made strawberry frosting before with fresh strawberries, and one word of warning is that the heavy fruit does make the frosting loose its shape. You don’t want to add too much more powdered sugar to make it stand up better, because then the frosting will be too sweet and too stiff. My motto is that it’s always better to have it taste good than look pretty.

**Note: be sure cupcakes are completely cool before frosting, or your frosting will melt all over the place. 

The pretty  frosting pouf that I piped on with a pastry tip deflated a bit, but the frosting tasted good. I don’t think I put enough tequila and lime in the frosting, however because you could taste the citrus in the cupcake and the strawberry in the frosting but the margarita concept seemed lost to the party guests gobbling the cupcakes. They were tasty though, and I got lots of compliments on them.

I think that next time, I will add more tequila and lime to the frosting, and some candied lime slices and maybe little drink umbrellas sticking out of the cupcakes. The cupcakes were good, but they were pretty much just strawberry lime.

Another note on using fresh strawberries as a topper: They begin to mold very quickly, so only top as many strawberry margarita cupcakes with fresh strawberries as you think will be eaten, and remove the strawberries from any leftovers.

Overall I would recommend this recipe for strawberry margarita cupcakes. They are a welcome sweet addition to any summer BBQ.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases from product links on this site.