Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

 
I have four sisters, two older and two younger (and the two younger are twins!!) If you have sisters, then I bet you can imagine the amount of chatting and giggling that goes on between FIVE amazingly close sisters. In recent years we have all gotten married and (sadly) moved quite far from each other, but (thank goodness) for modern technology - because it keeps all my sisters just a text or call away! Now, I bet you can imagine the high volume of talk time, texts and data being passed through each of our phones all day (and sometimes late into the night). So when I updated my iPhone 4 to a 5, I was dying to put Siri to good use!

If you have an iPhone 4s or 5, do you use Siri? When I first spoke to her she kept insisting that she ‘didn’t get that’ or, should she ‘search the web for that’ or kept repeating the most garbled messages ever back to me. I would get so frustrated. I was convinced Apple didn’t care much for the South African accent (although I am so aware that I half mumble everything I say!). But after many back and forth conversations with Siri, I think she finally gets me!

Round about now, you may be thinking you should quickly shut this page down and never return, but have you tried talking to her, or him I suppose?

Go ahead, ask Siri how many days until Christmas.

See, wasn’t that fun!

Now go ahead and ask some of these, the responses are so worth it:

• I’m tired
• What is the best smart phone
• Where are you from
• Open the pod bay doors
• Take me to your leader
• Are you serious
• When will pigs fly

So I have probably got you hooked by now. But Siri is pretty cool. In fact, what got me all off-baking-topic was using Siri to text my sisters! Check how awesome this is:

Did you know you could do this? You just tell her the relationship you have with a contact in your phone and she remembers it (like siblings, parents and spouse). Or you can just add it straight onto a contact by typing it in. I think its pretty awesome!

Not as awesome as these cupcakes though. They are just as easy and convient as using Siri!

And this is all it takes:

Yup! That's it! A box mix, its usual add-ins and slight twist - strawberry milk. Did you know that if a cake or muffin recipe calls for water, you can use milk, buttermilk or yoghurt instead? Yessiree! Using any of these three will most likely give you a much softer cake or muffin. Its like standard practice for me! SO when my box mix called for milk, I used strawberry milk instead.

Side note here: I have always felt rather sad when other bloggers have used a box mix to make something. Don't get me wrong, it is not because I frown on the use of box mixes, but simply because here in South Africa we hardly ever get all the really cool mixes that many of you get. So I am so sorry to do the same to you. But the good news is: its not the brand that will make this recipe work, its just a muffin or cupcake mix. SO you can just grab any old brand off the shelf at your grocery store, or you could make it from scratch. Either way I am sure it will work.

I also added one extra thing to these, some Milky Bar chocolate. I LOVE Milky Bar and am convinced that no other white chocolate can compare with it!

Don't you just love how easy box mixes are!

The substitution of milk or yoghurt probably won't affect the baking time, but just keep a close eye on your cupcakes when the recommended baking time is almost up. Mine were spot on!

You could stop right here if you wanted to and gobble them down, but I made the same vanilla butter cream icing I made for these Oreo S'more Cupcakes but used cream to soften it instead of milk.

TIP: remember to always use your splash guard when making icing.

I found these gorgeous flowers over at Nicoletta's . I also fell in love with these pink pearls and mini white pearls which you can find there too! They have an awesome online shop that ships world wide, so go check it!

Oh yum!

So once you have finished chatting to Siri, go and haul a cupcake box mix out of your pantry and make these yummy cupcakes!

Disclosure: The cake decorations in this post were sponsored by Nicoletta. All opinions expressed are my own.

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes Printable

Source: Bits of Sunshine Original

Yield: 12 Cupcakes

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: follow the recommended cooking time on your box mix

Ingredients:

1 box mix for 12 vanilla cupcakes

add-in ingredients as listed on the box mix instructions

strawberry milk

100g milky bar chocolate or 1 cup white chocolate chips

Method:

measure out and mix the wet ingredients substituting the water or milk with strawberry milk

mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients

chop up the chocolate into chunks (if you are using a bar)

add the chocolate to the cake mixture

spoon into prepared cup cake liners

bake as per the box mix instructions

let the cupcakes cool completely before icing them.

Fluffy Vanilla Frosting
Ingredients:
250g softened butter
560g icing sugar
dash of vanilla essence
dash of cream

Method:

In an electric mixture, mix butter and icing sugar until smooth and fluffy, adding the cream bit by bit until a nice smooth piping consistency is reached.
Add the vanilla essence and mix a bit more
Ice your cooled cupcakes as you wish!

www.bitsofsunshine.com  (c) Heidi Hawyes