Baking for Nightshift (and Leigh's Birthday)- Strawberry Cupcakes

Packed up and ready to go

These ones were made for the kids in Harry's ballet class as they have all been working really hard towards their Grade 1 exam

And a couple for the 2 lovely ballet teachers too

As I said in my previous post it was my friend Leigh's birthday on Monday. I had already planned on making the chocolate slice but I was hoping I would have time to make some cupcakes too. Last week I bought some of the delicious Petal Cupcakes which I blogged about. My favourite flavour was the Raspberry one which was beautiful beyond belief- especially the icing. I had read something where the owner of Petal Cupcakes was saying that she used freeze-dried fruit powders to get the flavour in the cupcakes. At the time these were only available (as far as I knew), for businesses not joe-public. However thanks to Becs who left a comment on one of my posts, I have managed to track down where you can now buy these powders you home use. For those who might be interested the manufacturer is Fresh-As and you can get these powders from Farro, Sabato and I think Nosh too. I went over to the new Farro in Constellation drive and bought the Strawberry and Blueberry ones. 


In all the years I have known Leigh, she has always been hot on fruit- especially summer fruit and berries so of course I had to try the Strawberry powder in my cupcakes for her. Let me tell you, these powders are incredible! They are easy to use and taste beautiful. You can tell they are the real thing as the flavour is a true one not that plastic, imitation one. I put about a heaped dessert spoon in the actual cake mix, (just a vanilla cupcake recipe from the Crabapple Bakery Book or you can use your favourite vanilla cupcake recipe), and to be honest I don't think it made all that much difference to the flavour of the cake. The real star was the buttercream icing where I added about 3 Tbsp of the powder. It really developed with time so the icing today tasted even better than it did last night (but it tasted pretty dam good last night if I do say so myself). These powders are well worth the purchase. They are a bit pricey but for that special treat you will be glad you bought them. The flavour variations are wide and include Raspberry, Plum, Feijoa, Passionfruit, Peach and so on. Next time I might add a bit more to the cake mix to give more of a flavour to the cake itself.


Anyway HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEIGH!!!! I hope your year ahead is wonderful as you deserve it to be xxx