- Hey, everyone.

Today, we're making strawberry champagne-filled vanilla cupcakes.

Look at these beauties.

I can't wait to show you how to make them.

So sit back, relax, and join me on "The Baking Journal."

(gentle upbeat music) Here are all the ingredients that we need for our strawberry champagne jam.

We have two cups of chopped-up strawberries.

We have 1.5 cups of granulated sugar, two tablespoons of pectin, two tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

And we couldn't have strawberry champagne jam without a little bit of champagne.

But we'll get to that in a few minutes.

So we start our jam by putting our strawberries into our pot.

And so let me get them all out here.

And to that, we are going to add our lemon juice.

Just cover that up.

I am going to turn our burner on and just kind of get that going at this point.

I want to just start the process of the strawberries getting a little bit soft and a little bit jammy, but the jam itself is gonna take probably 20 to 25 minutes or so cooking down before they actually reach the consistency that we want.

And in order to kind of help it get to the consistency that we want, this isn't really a potato masher, but it's the closest thing I have, and what I'm gonna do is just kind of start to mash some of these strawberries to release a little bit of the juice, but help them to cook down a little bit before we add the rest of our ingredients.

And we're not gonna cook these for long, it's just to get it started a little bit.

And I can see even now there's a little bit of action going on with the lemon juice and a little bit of the strawberry juice.

I can see it heating up.

So I think that's pretty good for now.

We've got it started.

We can mash it up as we go along.

To this mixture now, and I am going to turn down the power here, guys, just a little bit, 'cause I don't wanna burn our jam.

So I am adding the two tablespoons of fruit pectin to our jam.

You just want to get that in there and get it incorporated and stirred up.

I like to add it first, 'cause that way then I know I don't have clumps of pectin.

If I were to add it after the sugar and after things really get going, sometimes you can end up with a few clumps.

And I want it to get nicely incorporated because we are going to use this jam to fill our cupcakes.

So I really want the consistency of a thickened jam because that will make it look better, taste better, easier to eat inside of our cupcakes.

So I'm not sure if you guys can see it, but that pectin already is thickening up that little bit of lemon juice.

And there's a whole science, as I'm sure you guys may be aware, of the jam process.

We're really doing just a small batch here because we're using this jam for our cupcakes.

So we're not gonna talk about the canning process and all of that and all of the safety things we need to think about when we can.

All right, now that we've got some nice strawberry juice going, we're going to add our cup and a half of sugar.

So in it goes.

We're gonna stir that around.

And here's just a little tip that I've learned.

I've been making all different sorts of jams for quite a while now, playing with different flavor combinations.

One thing that I've learned is especially when you're doing berries like strawberries, they can get pretty juicy.

So you really want to be careful about your ratio of sugar to berry.

I know a lot of times we wanna cut back on our sugar content because we're trying to watch our calorie intake, but to make the jam really jam up, cutting back on the sugar might not be the best idea for our jam.

All right, so we've incorporated that.

Gonna let that do a little bit of its thing while we pop open the champagne.

And we need 1/3 cup.

So, hey, we've got this big bottle.

You know what I'm gonna do with some of the other champagne.

But first, now we're really testing my ability to see if I can get this open.

(bottle pops) Yay!

See, see?

Kind of a little practice with this.

So, okay.

1/3 cup goes into our jam.

And measuring champagne is always a little tricky because we've got all of our lovely little foam.

But I think we're at 1/3 cup, so I'm just gonna add it in right there.

Look at that little bubbling action.

And hey, a little for the baker.

All right, guys.

So let's keep stirring this up.

Adding the champagne definitely made it a little more liquidy here.

So I'm gonna turn down my heat just a little bit more because I want the jam to cook.

I don't obviously want it to burn.

And as you can see, there's foam that is kind of collecting on the top.

There's definitely one school of thought that says go ahead and remove the foam, but one of the things that I have found too is if you just keep stirring, you're not constantly battling the foam and removing the foam and then getting more foam.

So I'm just gonna stir this.

And we're really just gonna watch this and stir it occasionally for, gosh, it can be another 20 minutes, 25 minutes or so.

But I'm gonna do that.

You guys don't need to watch me.

I'm gonna enjoy a little bit of my champagne, and we'll come back when we're ready to fill our cupcakes.

And I'll show you what the end product looks like.

(gentle upbeat music) Here are all the ingredients that we need for our vanilla cupcakes.

I wanna show you everything we're gonna use, and then I'm also going to show you how to measure out the sugar and the oil.

But first, let's just start with what we've got here.

We've got one stick of unsalted butter.

We have three cups, or 375 grams, of all-purpose flour that I'm just gonna set aside for now.

We have one and a fourth cups of buttermilk.

We have four eggs.

We'll just set those aside here.

We have one tablespoon of baking powder, a half a teaspoon of salt, and two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

So we're gonna start by creaming our butter with our sugar and our vegetable oil.

So into the mixer bowl.

And I have the mixer bowl just sitting on a scale.

So first, I guess, let me turn on our scale.

I think the mixing goal is too heavy when you just turn it on.

So here, we're zeroed.

Now we're putting the bowl on.

I'm zeroing out my scale.

And here we go.

So I'm going to add my butter, which is at room temperature.

Nice and soft.

To that, I'm going to zero out my scale again, but to that, I'm measuring 120 grams of vegetable oil, which is also 1/2 cup.

I know some of you guys probably aren't into measuring, but honestly, if you do measure, at least for your cakes, it does make it a more consistent product in the end.

There we go.

Eh, got a little bit over, 122, but that's okay.

And then we need one and a half cups, which is 300 grams, of granulated sugar.

So I'm going to just add that.

And the beauty of actually measuring directly into the mixing bowl without using measuring cups and spoons and things like that is you have that much less to wash up at the end.

All right, so here is a common mistake.

I forgot to zero out my scale before I started adding my sugar.

So I need to remember that instead of 300 grams of sugar, I really now need four.

I need it to come to 422 because I was at 122 when I started.

So, hey kids, there's a little math for you.

All right, so let's get us up to 422.

(gentle upbeat music) 406.

We'll slow it down just a little bit.

And here we are.

Oh, 422.

Perfect.

All right.

So now let's get that onto the mixer and start mixing that together.

I'm gonna start it on low and then turn it up as everything starts to get incorporated so that I can not have stuff lying all over the kitchen.

So it looks like our butter is getting nicely incorporated with the sugar and the oil.

Let me turn it up just a tad.

(gentle upbeat music) I just want that to get a little lighter in color so that I know that it's creaming nicely.

We're gonna move this out of the way, and in it's place, I'm swapping out our flour.

I'm gonna move our scale out of the way as well.

(gentle upbeat music) Turn it up just a little bit.

(gentle upbeat music) Perfect.

All right.

To that, now I'm going to add my eggs.

So I'm just gonna do them while they're still on the mixer, one at a time.

And I'm just gonna keep it going while I'm adding one at a time.

(gentle upbeat music) That was a really orangey yolk.

Look at the pretty color it made the batter.

(gentle upbeat music) And now, I don't have my own chickens in the backyard, even though I wish I could.

But I don't.

(gentle upbeat music) All right, there's our eggs.

Get it all mixed in.

To that, I'm going to add two tablespoons of vanilla extract.

That's what gives these cupcakes their delicious vanilla flavor.

Mm, I can smell that vanilla.

And while that's mixing, I'm gonna take my flour, add my baking powder and my salt and give it a good whisk to mix them all together.

Try to keep it in the bowl.

(gentle upbeat music) Nice.

All right.

Gosh, that is such a pretty color.

All right, so now let's get our beater off.

And we can remove our bowl from the mixer.

We're not gonna use it anymore.

We're going to mix the rest of our ingredients by hand.

I know you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it again: We don't want to overbeat our cake batter.

It's gonna make our cake tough.

It's not what we want.

And if we do it by hand through this stage, it'll help because we know when we're beating enough.

We're not going to accidentally overbeat.

We don't really appreciate the power of our mixers, even though we love our mixers.

So, okay.

All right, let's do it.

And here is our buttermilk.

We're gonna alternate the dry ingredients with the buttermilk, starting and ending with the flour.

So let's move this guy.

I need my spatula.

And we're just going to put about a third of our flour mixture in.

And get that mixed in.

You just really have more control over how much you're mixing, how much pressure you're using.

And this is such an easy batter that it goes in quickly.

It's not like you're really having to work the batter to get it incorporated.

Okay.

So now we're doing half of the buttermilk.

I'm just gonna stir it up.

And our eggs, by the way, and our buttermilk are at room temperature.

So it helps to get everything nicely incorporated.

So let's mix that all in together.

Lovely.

Another third of our flour mixture.

(gentle upbeat music) And this way, too, you can be sure you're getting on all the sides, you're getting down underneath.

So you're not left with what looks like a beautiful batter, but then you have a big clump of something underneath that never really got mixed all the way through.

All right, that's good.

The rest of our buttermilk goes in.

Now we stir, getting down to the bottom again, all around the sides.

And now the last of our flour.

And see, this really didn't take any longer to do by hand than if we had it on our mixer.

Just get all the sides.

Get all the bottom flour mixed in.

And there we have it.

Our batter is ready to fill for our cupcakes.

(gentle upbeat music) So now we're ready to fill our cupcake liners.

You can use whatever you prefer, but I really love these individual cupcake holders.

They're firm.

You don't need cupcake pans.

You just fill right into each individual cup and put them in the oven.

So let's do it.

I use a ice cream scoop so that it gets it as uniform as possible.

And what I do here is just kind of make it as level as I possibly can.

You know, I know I've watched many shows where they really go for speed here while they're scooping out batter.

For me, it's almost meditative to just take my time, but it also helps me in getting them as even as possible.

And not just for the sake of trying to make them all nice and pretty, but also, they'll bake more evenly if they're all about the same size.

And as much as I love to measure things, I am so not into measuring individual cupcakes.

So there you have a little secret of mine.

But here we go.

We've got a few more left to do.

The batter will actually fill about 24 cupcake liners.

Maybe one or two more or less, depending on the size of your ice cream scooper.

While you're doing this, make sure your oven is preheated to 350 degrees.

And these are going to need to bake for about 18, 19 minutes.

What you wanna do is halfway through, especially if you're doing two pans at once, halfway through, switch them out, move them top to bottom, front to back.

But they're ready.

We're gonna put them in the oven, and we'll come back when they're ready.

(gentle upbeat music) So these have been in the oven for about 19 minutes.

I took them out.

Let them cool off for a few minutes.

And I started to core the centers, which is where we're going to put our strawberry champagne jam.

So let me show you how I cored them out on the remaining cupcakes here.

So all I have is just an apple corer.

You can use an apple corer like this.

You can use a spoon, you can use a little knife, whatever you have available.

But all I do is, basically, I'm just gonna move this, a second here, is take the core.

And I don't go all the way down because you want some of that cupcake on the bottom to hold your jam in place.

But all you do is just make a little circular motion, let the cupcake fall out from the center, and there you have it.

So we're gonna do that again with this guy.

Little circular motion.

Let the cupcake insides fall out.

If you do go all the way to the bottom, no worries.

You can take some of the cupcake that's in your bowl and just kind of refill the bottom of your cupcake.

It just makes it really difficult to eat if you don't have something that catches the jam down at the bottom of the cupcake.

But here, let me finish these up.

The jam itself is delicious, but inside the cupcake, it just makes for a very lovely, kind of sweet, very fruity addition to the vanilla.

It's really a great combination.

Over the years, I try all sorts of combinations in terms of filling, and I have to say that this might be one of my favorites.

So, okay.

Here we have all of our cupcakes cored.

I held this out 'cause I wanted to show you.

So when we were making our strawberry champagne jam, we let it cook down for about 25 minutes, and then I took it off the stove, put it in the refrigerator.

And this is the consistency, then, once it's been in the refrigerator and has cooled down.

But see how it jammed up just beautifully.

So I just wanted to show you guys what the finished product looked like.

All right, let's get that out of the way.

And now I put some of that delicious strawberry champagne jam in a piping bag, but you can use a Ziploc, you can use a spoon, if that's what you have available.

I find this is the easiest way to go.

I didn't cut a hole in it yet because then we would have jam all over the place.

So I saved that for this particular moment.

And just a little tip, and I tell you this tip only because I've done it in the past, whenever you're cutting a tip off of an icing bag, do it away from whatever it is that you are going to be filling or icing because you never know where that little tip goes.

And you really don't want someone to bite into your cake or your cupcake and eat a little bit of plastic.

So I'm just gonna do that over here.

There we go.

So now I see my tip.

I'm gonna move that out of the way.

And here we go.

You wanna fill these guys to the top, but don't be tempted to massively fill them because what will happen if you do way too much filling is your icing on the top is just kind of gonna slide off.

And it might be delicious, but it's going to be a mess at the end of the day.

It'll be difficult for someone to eat.

But see how easy it is just to kind of fill the centers with your jam?

And it's just the perfect consistency.

So it's not too runny, and yet it's not so thick that it's difficult to get into the cupcake itself.

Ah, get back in there.

All right.

Now we've got them all filled.

Now, some people, and you can do as you would like, some people take a little bit of that cupcake that we cored out and kind of smash it on top of the core.

I've done it both ways.

I don't know.

I kind of like the way this looks and the icing still goes on nicely.

So I'm not gonna mess with putting more cupcake on top of our jam.

All right.

And so what I have here is I prepared a creme fresh buttercream icing.

We're gonna put the recipe online for you guys, if anyone would like to give it a go, but it really is a pretty basic American buttercream recipe with the addition of some creme fresh to give it a little extra tangy flavor, almost like a cream cheese icing, but probably a little bit milder.

So here we are again.

It's in an icing bag.

I'm gonna cut my tip away from my cupcakes again.

And all I'm gonna do here to top them really is just swirl around.

And I'm gonna make a fairly big opening here.

And we're gonna see if I have enough in this bag to go around.

But the other tip, too, before I get started is, as you can see, I put a clip on the end of my bag here.

I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself, "Ah, I don't need a clip.

I'm just gonna roll it up, I'm gonna hold it shut in my hand, and I'm gonna do my thing."

Uh-uh, uh-uh.

Before you know it, you have icing coming out where you have your either piping tip or the opened area, and then you've got icing coming out on this end.

So just find a little clip or a rubber band and save yourself a mess.

So here, we're starting to start our icing.

We're just gonna start in the center and we're just gonna circle around, just like that.

Let's do it again.

We're gonna start in the center and we're gonna circle around.

As simple as that.

Start in the center, circle around.

Eh, that one's not beautiful, but that's all right.

Center, circle around.

And buttercream icing is usually pretty forgiving.

So like you just saw me, if you get a little stray piece of icing like that, it's usually okay.

And if you really feel compelled, you can clean them up with a little knife at the end, anyway.

The other thing, too, that can help is you can pick your cupcake up.

If you hold it kind of closer to yourself and put it at a little angle, sometimes that helps.

And then you can put a little more even pressure.

And now we have our 12 cupcakes iced.

They're beautiful just as is.

They're delicious just as is, but we can make them just a little bit more beautiful by adding some of our little fondant flowers that we made.

And this is marshmallow fondant that I make up, I mean, enough for months at a time.

And then on a rainy day, I just go ahead and make a bunch of fondant flowers and leaves so that I have them.

So when I make cupcakes or a cake and I just wanna add a little bit of decoration, I've got them right here.

So it's really just an easy add on.

So just pick any one, one that you like, and just place it on the center of your cupcake.

You can do as many or as few as you like, but the thing that I think really helps to make these look just a little fancier maybe is the addition of a leaf.

And it's so easy to make these little fondant leaves with a mold.

But see how that just adds a little touch of something?

You can do one leaf, you can do two leaves.

Go crazy.

Do whatever your heart desires.

But here's another little flower that we can just put on.

Maybe on this one, let's add another little flower along the side here.

Maybe I have a little lighter one here that we can add as well here.

But then, see, I mean it's okay.

But then you add a leaf or two, and I've got two different-colored fondant leaves here, and goodness gracious.

I think it just makes it all the more special.

So let's just do one more.

Let's show one maybe with a series.

Here, this one might make it a little easier for everyone to see.

Let's do just a few little flowers here and there rather than like one big one.

And this marshmallow fondant, as it sits on the icing, it really kind of blends in.

So it adds a little element of texture.

Doesn't really do a whole lot taste-wise.

It doesn't make it taste bad at all, but it really just is more for the decorating element, as well as kind of adds a little chewy, marshmallowy texture.

So here we can add another little leaf.

And maybe on this guy, since we have a bunch of little flowers, let's say I have another little leaf over here.

And maybe just because we can, I don't know, let's put one like right there in that little area in the middle.

I go a little crazy.

But this is the beauty of it, is we really can be creative and do as much or as little as you like.

That's kind of pretty.

And so three different cupcakes, three different designs.

But wait.

Just add one last little element of surprise or fancy.

I've got little sprinkles.

These guys, they're just little wafer paper.

They don't add any taste at all, but they do add a little bit of shimmer and shine.

These are in the shape of stars.

And so just to really put us that much over the top, just take a few of your little sprinkles.

And there you have it.

There's some ideas on how to make some delicious, beautiful strawberry champagne-filled vanilla cupcakes.

So come back in a second.

We'll plate these up.

I'll show you the inside and give it a taste.

(gentle bright music) So here they are, everyone.

Are you ready to see the inside?

I'm gonna cut them open so you can see the jam.

Ooh, check it out.

That is beautiful.

All right, let's give them a taste.

I'm going in.

(gentle bright music) Honestly, the vanilla cupcake is a winner by itself, but when you combine it with the strawberry champagne jam, the creaminess of the buttercream with the creme fresh in it, it is an absolute winner.

You have got to try these.

But I will tell you one thing: Don't try and do them all in one day.

Make the jam one day, make maybe the cupcakes next day, and your frosting even on the following day because you really want to enjoy these babies, and you don't wanna stress yourself out by doing it all in one day.

But absolutely do try them.

They are fabulous.

(gentle upbeat music)