Strawberry and Pimms Cupcakes...don't mind if I do!

Even though it was only about 10 degrees in Edinburgh this weekend, and cloudy, and overcast, and spitting...the beginning of the summer harvest is upon us! On Saturday, with David's head stuck in a revision book, I wandered over to the farmers' market to drool over the cheeses and meats and baked goods and produce and preserves. Limited to £10 I selected my goodies carefully...a bunch of asparagus, punnet of strawberries, potted thyme plant, 2 individual scotch pies, baby yellow tomatoes...and a latte (of course)! Pretty good for less than (well not much less than) £10! 

At home the thyme plant was planted, scotch pies were devoured for lunch and I set about making a batch of Strawberry cupcakes spiked with Pimms for Two Hippos Cupcake Challenge.  Actually, they weren't JUST for the challenge...they were also my birthday treat to me (along with the fabulous glass bowl)!!  

Using Martha Stewart's Basic Yellow Butter Cupcake recipe I added about a cup of chopped strawberries and about 60ml of Pimms.  The cupcakes rose really well...I had been stressing over them a bit...baking with fruit...and the added Pimms...but....they puffed up nicely.  The icing was a bit more difficult.  I don't know why, but it is always hit and miss for me with buttercream.  I think I am not patient enough, I always question the HUGE amount of icing sugar, and well...this weekend was a definite miss! Instead of milk I addd strawberry puree to the butter and icing sugar...in hind sight I think I should have made a regular buttercream and then added in the puree to that. It tasted great and looked fab, it just wasn't thick enough.  So after icing all the cupcakes I ended up putting them in the fridge to firm up....no biggie seeing as I like cold cakes anyway! 

oh...just incase you were wondering...the tomatoes and asparagus were roasted with some pancetta and then tossed with fresh pasta and lots of parmesan for dinner!! yum yum!