Baking With The Sis: Neapolitan Cupcakes

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My sister is on her Spring break, so she is back in town! Mid April is an odd time to schedule break though, but I guess that's the way dental school rolls. None of my sisters' spring breaks coincided with mine. Sad.

When my sisters were younger, my dad used to buy neapolitan ice cream for them to eat. I however only remember him buying french vanilla ice cream. What made it special was sprinkling Rice Krispies on top to get that crunchy texture along with the silky smooth ice cream. Is that a weird combination? I just know it's one of my more vivid memories of my childhood. Of course what I remember the best deals with food. 

I have attempted to bake with my sister several times in the past. Yet, each project has gone terribly wrong. We made chocolate cookies that came out of the oven deformed, mangled, crunchy, and just bad. They looked like amoebas. We tried making buttercream together. Who knows what went wrong there. The frosting was curdled and lumpy. Today we made cupcakes and aside from this batch, they puffed up, sunk, and spread into amoebas in the cupcake tins. Come to think of it, whenever we need to refer to one of these baking endeavors, we just need to say one word: amoeba.

I must give her credit for the piping of the frosting on these cupcakes though. She did a fine job. She was able to utilize my brand new french piping tip. It is so pretty!

Below is the recipe for the buttercream frosting that literally tastes like strawberry ice cream. I ended up mashing the frozen strawberries with a fork instead of whipping out the food processor so that there were bright red speckles throughout. The cake itself is half chocolate cake, which you can find the recipe here, and the magnolia vanilla cake, which you can find a reference to here. I normally hate confectioner's sugar frostings because I find them grainy. However, I find that you just need to beat the frosting for a very long time so that it gets smoother, fluffier, and creamier. Enjoy!

Whipped Strawberry Frosting
From Sweetapolita
INGREDIENTS

• 3 sticks + 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 4 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons strawberry puree, made from frozen strawberries

DIRECTIONS

1. Beat the butter on medium speed of a mixer until pale and fluffy. Roughly 8 minutes.
2. Turn down the speed to low and dump in the rest of the ingredients except for the strawberry puree. Beat for one minute, and then increase the speed to medium again for 6 minutes so that the frosting becomes very light and fluffy.
3. Add in the strawberry puree and beat to thoroughly combine. Use immediately.