Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

Last week, my dad had a birthday. Unfortunately, he has had to work so much that we didn’t get to celebrate it but I definitely wanted to make him a birthday treat since that is tradition in the family. He requested strawberry and chocolate so I got to work and had some fun!

You’re going to love the cake part of this recipe because it is so incredibly easy. I know they sell strawberry cake mix and I also do scratch made fairly often, but I am obsessed with this recipe I found for “are you kidding?” cake. They call it that because its just a box of any flavor cake mix, a box of pie filling, and 3 eggs. It is so moist and delicious that I like to use it whenever I can. I did a spice cake mix with apple and made a caramel filling once and it was a hit! The pie filling makes the strawberry flavor so much more real than just the strawberry cake mix in my opinion.

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After making this type of cake so many times, I also found out that beating the pie filling first gives it a better texture. A few chunks of fruit are nice, but with it being pie filling, there are some pretty large chunks in there. I like to put the pie filling itself in a dish and get the big chunks out before I add in the rest of the ingredients.

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Dad also requested that I make filled cupcakes and I was kind of excited because I haven’t made filled ones in forever. Since chocolate was the request, I knew what my filling would be. I decided on a light chocolate mousse since I’ve been doing heavy cupcakes lately and I think everyone is just being too nice to tell me that they’re all “cupcaked” out.

A friend got me an amazing little device from Wilton that takes the centers out of cupcakes and I don’t know how I’ve made it this far without it! It is super helpful and I can’t wait to make more filled cupcakes in the future.

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For me the frosting was a no brainer- it would be strawberry too. Why? Because I have never made chocolate frosting. I know I need to learn a good homemade chocolate frosting recipe sometime in my life, but this would not be that time. Most of the recipes involve melting chocolate and actually working with it so it becomes something decent whihc is not one of my strong suits. I was lucky to be bale to melt the bakers chocolate for the red velvet cupcakes. Maybe someday you’ll see a chocolate frosted cupcake on here, but for now, strawberry went over pretty well.

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The cream cheese frosting recipe I use for the red velvet cupcakes was so good that I’ve been trying to adapt it lately and each adaptation has gone over really well. The strawberry was no exception. A small bit of strawberry extract and some pink food dye made a surprisingly tasty frosting.

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For some reason, this frosting is a bit harder to pipe for me so maybe I shouldn’t have tried it with my new Russian ball tips, but I couldn’t resist. I definitely should have used a different frosting when using the tips for the first time, but I had fun anyway and I had a few failures as well. I took a picture of my best and my worst to show you all here. The Russian piping tips are super neat, but there is a learning curve since they’re so different. They leave a hole in the top of the frosting design so definitely make sure you have something to top the cupcakes with. A Hershey’s kiss was perfect for these and it made even the wonky ones look delicious.

The most important part of all is that my dad loved these! They were light and moist and perfectly delicious.

I also want to say that next week, there won’t be a blog post. I am getting married this week and my groom and I will be on an at home honeymoon (a “Homemoon???”). With many things being closed, we decided to postpone our big New Orleans honeymoon plan and think about doing something smaller, but at this time, that may not be on the table either. All we have planned so far is a week together and that’s enough for me. Next time you read a post from me, I will be a Mrs.

I hope you have a beautiful week and I can’t wait to share more of my little world with you all.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Recipe

Cupcakes: (makes 18)

• 1 can of strawberry pie filling
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 box french vanilla cake mix

Chocolate mousse filling:

• 1 box instant chocolate pudding mix
• 1 c. milk
• 1 tub of cool whip

Strawberry frosting:

• 1 block (8oz.) cream cheese, softened
• 2 sticks (1c.) butter, softened
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract
• 2 tsp. strawberry extract
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 – 2 T. milk or coffee creamer
• Pink or red food coloring

Additional items:

• Hershey’s kisses for garnish
• cupcake corer
• cupcake papers
• piping tip
• piping bag or ziploc bag

Instructions:

In a large mixing bowl, beat the pie filling with a hand mixer until the big chunks of fruit are broken up. Beat in the eggs and vanilla before adding in the cake mix. Beat in the cake mix until thoroughly combined. Scoop the mix into a cupcake pan lined with cupcake papers filled about 3/4 of the way full and bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes.

Allow the cupcakes to cool on a rack as you make the filling and frosting.

To make the mousse, use your hand mixer to beat together the chocolate pudding mix and milk for two minutes. Gently fold in the whipped topping and refrigerate while you core your cupcakes and make frosting.

For the frosting, beat together the cream cheese, butter, extracts, and 1 T. milk (or cream). Add in the powdered sugar and beat until thoroughly combined, making sure to stop and scrape down the bowl. If you feel that the frosting needs thinned down a bit, add in another tablespoon of milk or cream along with the food coloring until it gets to the consistency and color you like to use for piping.

Once you have your cupcakes cooled, use the corer and use a large round piping tip to fill them with the chocolate mousse.

Use a piping tip of your choice to pipe the frosting onto your cupcakes. For the topping, garnish them with a chocolate kiss and refrigerate until they’re ready to serve.

For piping advice, I highly recommend YouTube tutorials. They are awesome for beginning!