Strawberry Cupcakes

These are the ever-popular Sprinkles cupcakes, and you can find the recipe anywhere on the interwebs, so I have no qualms about reposting it here. The cake is perfect: dense, not fluffy, and not very sweet. The frosting is too sweet on its own, but on the cupcakes, it's ideal. Pro tip: you really have to beat the crap out of the butter and make sure it's super-fluffy before adding the wet ingredients; then, when you add the berry puree, beat again, on high, for several minutes. If it looks like it's all congealed and nasty, be patient. It /will/ come together.

For cupcakes:

1. I pureed a cup of washed strawberries, then set it aside. I put out the milk, eggs, and butter to get to room temperature.
2. I turned the oven to 350 and put liners in my muffin pan.
3. I whisked together 1 1/2 C flour, 1 t baking powder, and 1/4 t salt. In a liquid measuring cup, I put 1/4 C whole milk, 1 t vanilla, and 1/3 C of the berry puree (or maybe a bit more).
4. With a stand mixer, I creamed 1 stick of unsalted butter for a LONG time until very fluffy. Then I added 1 C sugar and beat again until very fluffy. I turned the speed to medium and slowly added 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites, one at a time, stopping to scrape the bowl a few times.
5. With the mixer on low, I added 1/2 the flour mixture. When it was incorporated, I added the milk. Same drill with the rest of the flour. 
6. I divided the batter into my muffin cups, and baked for 25 minutes on the dot.

For frosting:

1.  I creamed 2 sticks of cold butter with a pinch of salt until very light and fluffy. Then I slowly added 1 1/2 C of confectioner's sugar.
2. Then I /very slowly/ added in 1 t of vanilla and about 1/4 C of the berry puree. Then I added a bit more berries, and a bit more, until it tasted super strawberry-ish. I kept the mixer running until it was all incorporated and airy, but it isn't light like a buttercream frosting.
3. Then I frosted the cooled cupcakes and ate about 5 of them.

Video games CAN be good for you!

Children are perverse.

Sometimes you can fool them--reverse psychology works like a charm. Other times...well, not so much. I've learned that you cannot give them a choice between something you want them to pick and something you don't; invariably, they'll choose the latter. "Do you want to go to the BEACH (voice goes up and out to indicate This Is The Best Option) or to the park (barely enunciated in hopes it won't register)?" always ends in "The park!!!"

Likewise, I once bought a Ratatouille-themed game for my 4-year-old, hoping that he'd merrily fry his brain while the game implanted subliminal "I love cooking!" messages. Instead, he ditched it for two years in favor of the Cars game, narrated by some redneck-y sounding NASCAR dude. #momfail

However, at some point during this school year, Max began playing Ratatouille on our daily commute to Tampa. I imagine this happened because the commute is long and boring and he had exhausted his less educational games. Desperation leads us down many unlikely paths.

So but anyway, a few weeks ago, Max says to me (apropos of nothing), "I know how to make eclairs. Chef Gusteau says I do it perfect. Let's make them for reals."

Let's hear it for delayed gratification.

Afraid he'd lose interest in French cookery faster than I lost interest in the first LOTR movie, I grabbed Amanda Hesser's beautiful New York Times Cookbook, found to my delight that we already had every ingredient in the list (including ONE BILLION EGGS), and pulled out the aprons.

I'm happy to report that Max read the recipe, fetched the ingredients, measured them out (after an impromptu lesson on fractions), and pretty much did everything except beat the living shit out of the pastry dough, which turned out to be my job. (It also turned out to be really, really hard, because I did not have a wooden spoon, but Max did--"in my baking kit," as he triumphantly announced--which was about five inches long, being obviously optimized for use by a toddler.) Oh, okay, I piped the dough onto the baking sheet and filled a few of the more deflated and difficult-to-fill eclairs. But he did the rest.

Normally, I'll copy recipes from books up here because I usually alter the hell out of them anyway and that's how I roll, but in this case not, because I don't fuck with baking recipes and because everyone should buy Ms. Hesser's book RIGHT NOW and use it every day.

They were delicious, if slightly unglamorous (they were made by a 6-year-old and an adult with the baking prowess of a 6-year-old), and fun to make. Except they took about 15 minutes longer to bake than the recipe suggested, and beating that dough SUCKED. Eating them, however, did not suck.