That’s right. We blinked and she’s two! It’s like she was born just yesterday. And I was born two years back too. A birth of a child is also the birth of a mother, isn’t it? So our second rodeo!
I had this owl shaped blackboard and I wrote this message with chalk markers. I think chalk markers are genius, by the way. I had Meera stand next to it for photos. They came out pretty well.
Cake – wise, I knew I had to make something with strawberries in it. She loves loves loves strawberries. Strawberry cupcakes – perfect. But try searching the internet for strawberry cakes/cupcakes which use fresh strawberries and you’ll not find too many. Most recipes use strawberry jello or boxed cake mix and I didn’t want either of them in my cake.
I finally went with ‘My San Francisco kitchen’s Fresh Strawberry Cake.
Here’s mine –
I made a few changes to her recipe –
First of all I made cupcakes 🙂 Her recipe makes 12 cupcakes.
Her recipe calls for 2 tbsp of cornstarch, which I didn’t have on hand. I just used 2 tbsp of all purpose flour instead. Worked just fine.
I used the same frosting she did. Vanilla cake frosting, but to make it more strawberry-y, I added 2 tbsp of thickened strawberry puree which I used in the cake. It also gives the frosting a beautiful pink color and has intense strawberry flavor.
M loved it!And guess what we did for her birthday. We took her berry picking. We now have about 2 pounds of strawberries. Why do I have this feeling that by the time summer is over, I won’t be able to look at another strawberry!