Living in Southern California, I probably shouldn't complain about the autumn weather, but I'm going to anyway. It's gray. It's cold. My poor pale skin hasn't seen sunshine since...this morning! *sigh*

I just got back from a trip to the midwest (Chicago and Milwaukee to be exact) and I know that everywhere else, it truly is starting to get cold and gray and very autumnal. Food to match is all about roasted meat, root vegetables, and creamy soups all in shades of brown, golden yellows, and orange. Time to shake things up a little!

Strawberries in November are extremely unseasonal, but when baking them into cupcakes, frozen strawberries are preferred anyway. Something about their squishy thawed texture and their unnaturally bright red syrup (even if they're "unsweetened") makes them perfect. Of course, I didn't know how to incorporate strawberry puree into a frosting, so they are covered with cream cheese frosting tinted pink with food coloring.

As a side note...every recipe I've ever seen for strawberry cake is made from white cake mix in a box mixed with strawberry gelatin. *ew* Using only strawberry puree in a cake batter doesn't make it very pink, so the gelatin is probably added to make it more pink, but somehow, I feel like I'm cheating (but if you're on Sandra Lee's team, I guess you'll be okay with it).     

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to 350 and line muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.

2. Cream together 2 sticks (1 cup) of softened butter with 1½ cups white sugar and ½ cup packed brown sugar. Beat in 4 room temperature eggs one at a time. Stir in 1 cup strawberry puree made from frozen strawberries, and 1 tablespoon vanilla. (I would say "very good vanilla" here, but I never really understood why Ina Garten felt the need to tell us that).

3. In a separate bowl, sift together 2¾ cups of sifted cake flour with 2½ teaspoons baking powder.

4. Stir the flour mixture into the strawberry mixture alternating with 1 cup whole milk at room temperature.

5. Pour batter into cupcake liners and bake 18-21 minutes (mine took 18). The cupcakes don't pouf up as much as plain chocolate or vanilla cupcakes, I think because the strawberry puree weighs them down a bit. But who cares? They taste f**kin' great.

6. Frost with cream cheese frosting tinted pink with food coloring. Be careful. One drop of red goes a very long way.