Strawberry Cupcakes and Cake Pops

I thought I'd try something a little different for cupcakes this time.  I haven't had a lot of fruit cupcakes and had no idea what to base my choice of recipe on.  I searched around and ended up choosing this recipe from allrecipes.com based on the high reviews that it got.  Thankfully, they turned out very well and the frosting was delicious! 

Strawberry Cupcakes
Adapted from: allrecipes.com
Printable Recipe Here

Ingredients:
1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 ounces pureed strawberries (fresh or frozen)

Frosting: 
8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
5 cups confectioners sugar
3 ounces pureed strawberries

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Place cupcake liners in pans or grease and flour cake pans.
In large bowl, dissolve the gelatin in the cold water; stir in the cake mix, eggs, vegetable oil, flour and 5 ounces pureed strawberry.  Beat for 5 minutes on medium with electric mixer and pour into cupcake/cake pans.
Bake cupcakes for 15 minutes and cake for 25-30 minutes, or until layers spring back when lightly pressed in the center.  Cool caked on wire racks.
To make frosting: With electric mixer, cream together cream cheese and butter until well combined.  Sift in 4 cups confectioners sugar.  Add 3 ounces strawberry puree and mix until well combined.  Add 1 cup (or however much it takes) confectioners sugar in 1/4 cup increments until you reach the desired consistency.  Frosting will be soft; refrigerate cupcakes once frosting is piped on.

Amy's Notes:
I made half of these as mini cupcakes and half as a nine inch round cake for cake pops.  The cake was very good but the frosting is the winner of these cupcakes.  The strawberry puree in the cream cheese buttercream frosting was awesome.  I did add quite a bite more confectioners sugar than I normally do for my frosting to get a good piping consistency, but the extra confectioners sugar did not take away from the taste at all!  It was really good.  I will admit that I was pretty proud of the frosting.  I took the idea of strawberry puree from one recipe and adapted it to the recipe I always use and I will definitely do it again, probably with other fruit too!  The cake pops were good too.  I realized I need to get a few versatile types of sprinkles for cake pops.  I had already used everything that I had on hand except for the orange ones I ended up using that I happened to buy the day before because they were $1.  Overall, cupcake and cake pops success and sprinkles on my grocery list.

Half for cupcakes...

Half for cake pops.

Lookin' good, cupcake!



Tried a new frosting style.  Need to perfect.
(Look at the flecks of strawberry in the cake and icing!)



Look at the color of that cake!

Crumbled and awaiting icing for my cake pops

The orange sugar coating is festive for fall, but not color coordinating with the pink cake!

Tried a few sprinkle options before settling on the orange.  This looked too much like Christmas for me.