Birthday (Strawberry) Cupcakes

When I was a little girl, my great grandmother was the one responsible for all of the baking. It made sense. Her parents owned a bakery when she was a girl and she had some amazing recipes in her head for baked goods.

As she got into her nineties one of my aunts decided to write all of her recipes down and make little photocopied booklets for the rest of our family so that when my great grandmother was gone we'd still be able to make her recipes. (I feel like this sounds more selfish than it was, but I was a kid so who knows).

Anyway, one of signature recipes was the strawberry cake she would make for our birthdays. It was simply amazing. I've tried my hand at it before, but this time I thought I'd do something a little different and go for cupcakes.

A friend of mine has a birthday and after all the blizzarding we've had, it felt like today was a good day to bake.

Here's the recipe for the best strawberry cake that I've ever had.

You'll need:

1 White Cake Mix (I like Duncan Hines)
1 cup vegetable oil
1 package strawberry jello (I like to use the sugar free kind since there's already a lot of sugar in this cake)
4 eggs
1 package (10 oz) of frozen strawberries (thaw these beforehand)
1 lb confectioners sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F

Dissolve the jello into 1/4 cup of hot water.

Mix into a bowl with the white cake mix.

Add the oil and the four eggs and beat the mixture until it's smooth.

Add half of the frozen strawberries. I bought the whole frozen strawberries so I sliced them up and put them into the mix. If you manage to get pre-sliced ones that's even better.

Pop the batter into cake or cupcake pan and put it into the oven. My great grandmother used to use two circular pans to make a layer cake. But today I'm doing cupcakes. Much easier.

For baking, I always add 1-2 minutes to the cook time on the white cake box. So for these cupcakes, I baked for 23 minutes.

When they're done, take them out and let them cool. (Don't ice them until they're cool, otherwise you'll have a runny mess.)

For the icing, combine the stick of butter, the confectioners sugar and the remaining thawed strawberries.

Beat until they're smooth.

Then ice.

And eat.