Tastes like summer!

My fondant cake will make an appearance here someday, but I'm still working on getting the pictures off the camera. Turns out I need to get an extra thinger for it that will be an easy fix. Only problem is I don't have the extra money for it at the moment. Just as I was getting you all excited for some non-phone pictures! Such a tease. Oh well, onto the baking!

The weather here in MN has been jumping around like crazy! One day it will be 60, the next in the mid 80's. I wouldn't be surprised if it snowed tomorrow. Thankfully the produce is slowly but surely getting better here. Strawberries are something I very much miss during the long winters, so I really wanted to incorporate them into my next baking project.

Thankfully I found a great recipe that I wanted to try over at MBA. The actual mix for the cakes was AWESOME! It was semi-homemade, but hard to go wrong with devil's food cake mix, pudding mix and sour cream in the batter. It literally melted in my mouth. These cakes would have been great topless (Editor's note: what isn't?), but I was dying to make the frosting.

Even though strawberries are a little more in season, Josh and I literally looked through boxes and boxes to find a container with presentable berries. I almost scrapped the whole thing but crossed my fingers that the strawberries would taste better than the looked!

Into the blender they go.

Yum. I may or may not have licked the paddle.

I think buttercream is good plain. However, my only complaint about it is that it can get a little too sweet. The great thing about adding the strawberries is that the tartness really reduces the overwhelming sweetness. Also, the strawberry flavor came through really well.
You can't have chocolate dipped strawberries without actually dipping some!

Seriously, it was slim pickings when it came to finding the good whole strawberries, so I had to resort to cutting some and dipping the chunks.

These cupcakes turned out really well! Much better than the last ones I tried to make! Not to mention they're a lot prettier. I am pretty excited to try out some different fruit recipes as the selection gets better.

PLUS I am going to make a lot more "adult" baked goods. Meaning cooking with alcohol (get your heads out of the gutter!) My friend Mark gave me a great book with tons of recipes and ideas! Thanks Mark!

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend!