The Eyes, The Look, The Shake of the Head... The Lemon Story.

Freeze Dried Strawberries - saw them at my Aldi  and wondered why on earth you'd want to eat them when you could eat fresh berries.  Then I found this recipe for Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes - Oh… that's why you might want them…  for amazing frosting…. I see.
Heading off to our friends for dinner, looking for a recipe that wasn't crazy chocolate.  Feels like I do a lot of chocolate.  This recipe had the right mix of delicious non overly sweet frosting and near death experience in the cake part.
The zesting of the lemon is what often gets me in trouble.  It also gives me away to Andy - in a big way.  I get "the eyes" and "the look" and the "shake of the head" and the "you’re an adult, you do what you want" speech.  But as you can tell - I survived another near zesting experience.   It's true!
There was quite a bit of lemon juice in the batter as well - but oh did it taste good.  Shhhh…
The recipe I read said to sift the strawberries to get the big pieces out.  Bah… big pieces sounded yummy.  Oh… then they don't pipe all that well and when you do pipe them they get stuck in your tips and your pretty flowers end up looking really strange.  See… sometimes people know things.  It's good to know things.   Know you know things.  Like you should try these, they are amazing… some might say life changing… or life ending, I mean changing.
Note: I just made these again for a dessert auction at church - they collected a pretty penny… Nice to see people have awesome taste.

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Lemon Cake:
1 box white cake mix
1/3 C. oil or melted butter
3 eggs
zest of 2 lemons
1/4 C. fresh lemon juice
1 C. sour cream
1/2 C. milk

Strawberry Frosting:
1 C. butter
1 (1.2 oz) pkg. freeze dried strawberries*, crushed and sifted to remove large pieces
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice, optional
3-4 C. powdered sugar
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with cupcake liners.
2. Sift cake mix into a large bowl to remove any lumps and continue to add the remaining cake ingredients. Stir until smooth.
3. Sill cupcake liners 3/4 full and bake for 15-20 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.
4. Let cool.
5. Strawberry Frosting: Beat butter and crush freeze dried strawberries until smooth. Add vanilla and lemon juice and slowly add in powdered sugar. Scrape the side of the bowl as needed and add powder sugar until it becomes thick enough.
6. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes