The letter B. Is there anything that this day could possibly be about other than butter cream?

Last week I made a lemon butter cream that was absolutely delicious.

The lemon really cut through the rich sweetness of the frosting and gave the cake an almost refreshing feel.

With this in mind, I knew I wanted to make a butter cream that wasn’t overpowering and that maybe had a citrusy or fruity twist. It is spring after all.

So when I walked into the store and saw these

i knew.

Strawberry butter cream had to happen.

Now, I’m going to admit, I’m not the best baker.

I started out loving baking, but then over the years I grew to be more of a cook.

So while this butter cream actually came out tasting great, it wasn’t quite how I envisioned. I wanted a bit of a firmer texture. But this came out a little more on the fluffy side. I think I didn’t compensate enough for the extra liquid the strawberries brought to the mix.

But hey. That’s part of the fun of cooking!

Let the kitchen be your laboratory and experiment away.

I’ll tell you what I did and then I’ll tell you what I think I would do differently.

So my vision was a lighter butter cream.

I love me a so-sweet-your-teeth-hurt glob of butter cream on my cupcakes, but after eating a bag of jelly beans without realizing I had eaten a whole bag, I was thinking I should cut the sugar a bit.

Strawberries are naturally sweet, so that would let me cut down the amount of powdered sugar.

I didn’t want to use a full stick of butter though. So I thought maybe mixing some whipped cream into the butter cream to make a less dense frosting.

So that was my thought process.

Toss your hulled strawberries into the blender or food processor (I used 10)

give it a buzz

Next, pour some heavy cream into a bowl and whip it up

into a thick an frothy whipped cream

I didn’t put any sugar in because now we are going to fold in the strawberry puree

and we will tailor the amount of sugar we add based on the sweetness of the strawberries.

You’ll get a very pretty, light pink whipped cream that would be lovely to top a cream pie with.

A banana strawberry cream pie would be heavenly!

But I wanted to top some cupcakes, so I needed this to have a bit more substance to it.

And here’s where the butter cream comes in.

And where I think mistakes start to be made.

So I used half a stick of butter and a cup of powdered sugar.

And I am an impatient baker. Which is why I’m not the best baker.

And I don’t think I whipped the butter and sugar up quite enough.

So when I added it to the whipped cream, it didn’t quite incorporate as well.

Also, next time I would add the whipped cream to the butter cream. I think my ratio was off and if I had added whipped cream to the butter cream I would have had more control over the texture.

But, I gave it a taste, added a little more powdered sugar (my strawberries weren’t as sweet as I thought) and gave the mixture a good whipping with a hand mixer. And let it sit in the fridge for about a half hour.

The result?

A light and fluffy strawberry butter cream meets whipped cream cupcake topper.

You really taste the strawberries. And you’re not overwhelmed by butter and sugar.

a semi-successful butter cream experiment.