Saturday Strawberry , Sunday Strawberry

The local strawberries are in and they are scrumptious! This weekend was the opening Saturday of our Cotton Mill Farmer's Market. It was lovely to catch up with the "market folks". It was a cool morning on Saturday and I enjoyed a lovely bike ride to the Market.

I tried the basket idea for farm goodies but it held too little. Luckily, I was able to catch a ride for the flat of strawberries I got.

I hobbled together a quick breakfast at the market, fresh strawberries, a coconut muffin and some coffee

I came home from market with eggs, spinach, Pak choy, lettuce and some succulent baby onions, but the big score was an entire flat of Crager-Hager Farm strawberries, grown without pesticides and each one picked at the perfect ripeness.

I ate one pint for breakfast

Red all the way through and sweet, like they are supposed to be

After market, I entertained several visitors to the garden, had an order of macarons picked up and delivered an orchid centerpiece, wow a busy but good afternoon. I also made a quick trip to the local ACE garden center and planted an order for a container garden before it got too dark. I was trying to think of something good to bring the the bake sale Sunday morning and decided cupcakes would be a nice addition to the handful of macarons I was bringing. I have not baked cupcakes since last year so I figured it was about time to whip some up.

The recipe I was making made 2 dozen cupcakes and i only had one 12 cup pan so I decided to do the cakes in half batches. The scale was handy in dividing the dry ingredients

This is how I "sift"

I had some dehydrated strawberries that needed to be used up so I crushed them and added it to the batter.

 

Ice cream scoop makes it easy dividing the cake batter

I experimented with the frosting, Strawberries, powdered sugar and mascarpone

 

I wanted the frosting to be thicker so I added some whipped butter to it

 

 

I ate one for breakfast before church

Ready for the sale!

My first batch of frosting did not cover all the cupcakes and I raided the fridge and came up with another "made up" frosting. this time, fresh strawberries, Double Devon Cream, powdered sugar and some butter. I was pleased with the result, a very moist strawberry butter-cream and it was very stable. I was able to drive all over town with those cupcakes.