Strawberry Buttercream Icing

Here is a relatively easy recipe, that is going to blow your mind.  I actually made these a couple of weeks ago, and haven't had time to blog about them... but they were totally devoured when I brought them to work.  The boys loved them!



Strawberry Buttercream Icing:

• 1 lb strawberries (you won't use all of this in the recipe)

• 1 1/2 sticks butter
• pinch of salt
• 1 3/4 cups icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Crisco (my secret ingredient!)

Method:

1. Take your strawberries, wash them and slice 'em up.  Puree them in a food processor, blender, Magic Bullet, whatever you have.  (I used my Magic Bullet and it worked like a charm.

2. In a mixer (I used my trusty KitchenAid), take your butter & salt and cream them together.  Once the butter is smooth, slowly add your icing sugar.

3. Once that's smooth, add 4 tablespoons of the strawberry puree, plus your vanilla extract to the mix.  It'll get a little bit liquidy, so that's when you add in the little bit of Crisco.  That will give it the smooth, icing texture, the bakery-like taste and the nice colour.  (I'm pretty sure a purist would never use Crisco in their buttercream... but seriously, try it.)

You can let your icing chill out in the fridge for a bit while you make your cupcakes.  I added the rest of my strawberry puree to a plain vanilla cupcake... the taste was good, but the muffins fell a little flat, I guess because of the extra liquid, so I'm not going to share that recipe. I'll hunt down another recipe for next time instead!
Add the icing to a piping bag... screw on a tip, and pipe away!

Voila! You're done!