Working Wednesday with Lou… Homemade Strawberry Icing

So… today is Thursday, but we made it on Wednesday, and I got an unexpected (but incredibly awesome) concert tickets for last night, so I didn’t get to write the blog! Plus, if you follow these blogs, you already know I struggle with time management with the blogs… but I get everything else do so it fine!

Yesterday was my mother-in-laws Birthday. Lou loves to make everyone in our family a birthday cake because that’s what you do for birthdays. Lou and her Nanny have tea parties and eat strawberries when they visit together, so Lou wanted to make a strawberry cake. With school and schedules I knew it could not be a real homemade cake, so we used box cake mix and made homemade icing (and I am not going to lie I hate making cakes from scratch!!!!) Also, two of my daughters do not like strawberries, so the cake was white cake mix.

I had never made homemade strawberry icing before. When Lou decided on strawberry, I was a little nervous, but I found a recipe, and we did our best. I need to confess that it did take me two tries to get some that tasted delicious, but Nanny and Lou were happy with the final result!

For the first attempt, we used:

• 1 cup of salted butter softened

• 1 tsp of Vanilla

• 4 cups of powdered sugar (the original recipe called for 8 cups, but I could see that I had made a mistake, so I stopped at 4?! Plus 8 seemed like way toooo much!)

• 1.5 pounds of strawberries. (that Lou picked out herself at the store!!)

First, we worked together to make the cake and cupcakes. Then while they were baking, Lou washed the strawberries and helped me cut the green parts off. Then I basically stewed them in a saucepan (they used a different word, but I did save the recipe just shorthand the instructions, so I don’t know what its actually called!?) Once that was done, I was supposed to refrigerate them, but I had written down cool, so I just removed them from the heat. I then mixed the softened butter and two cups of powdered sugar. Next, I poured in the strawberries and right away I could tell I had messed up because it melted the butter instantly. Lou pours two more cups of sugar in, but It did not help AT ALL! So, I put it in the refrigerator and made a plan B. I was already thinking about making Vanilla icing for the non-strawberry eaters, so I worked on that while I was thinking on how to fix the strawberry mess.

Made the vanilla icing using:

• 1 cup of unsalted butter softened

• 1 tsp of Vanilla

• 4 cups of powdered sugar

• ¼ cup of milk (we used almond milk because that is what I had)

• (*it calls for a dash of salt, but I never add it)

To make it you literally put all “wet” ingredients into the bowl and mix the powder sugar in a little at a time until ins the consistency you want and that’s it. Lou and I took turns mixing and pouring the powder sugar in the bowl. After it was thoroughly mixed, we iced half the cupcakes with the vanilla icing. (I may have even put a little up to eat later!) I scoped a big spoonful over into my leftover vanilla icing and mixed the two together. (If I had to estimate it was probably about a cup of that strawberry mix.) It was delicious! Lou and I may attempt a strawberry bunt cake this weekend with the left-over strawberry mix, because there is a lot of it, and I wouldn’t want to waste it!

I hoped you enjoyed being part of our crazy! Until next time…