Jack's Pink-and-Purple Birthday Cupcakes

Jack presented me with quite the dilemma this year: he asked for a pink cake with purple frosting. At first I thought he was joking, but he continued to ask for it, so I decided that I'd have to deliver. First of all, I love that he doesn't have any gender stereotypes about colors -- he thinks that the two new houses being built in our neighborhood should be pink and purple, too. I love this kid.

I asked him what flavor of "pink" he wanted and he said strawberry, so I set out to find a good strawberry cake recipe. It wasn't easy. Most strawberry cakes involve a box or a boxed white cake with strawberry jello mixed in. I know I'm a total food snob when I say this, but box cakes are not acceptable in our house, especially not for a birthday. Finally, a former yearbook student of mine, now a mom of a toddler herself, helped me track down a "from scratch" recipe that didn't involve big chunks of strawberries (another undesirable, in my opinion) and was actually a modified version of a Martha Stewart recipe. I trust Martha to make good cake, so I followed the recipe for Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes.

But there was still the issue of the purple frosting. I thought I'd have to break down and use food coloring, which I prefer not to do, but even that became an issue because a friend of mine told me that Wilton's purple cake dye tastes really bitter. So, I decided to try using blackberry jam as a colorant. I made my usual cream cheese frosting recipe and added about a 1/4 cup of blackberry jam. Voila! Purple frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 stick of butter, softened
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 1/4 c. powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
(and 1/4 c. blackberry jam, to make purple blackberry frosting)

I followed the suggestion from the cupcake recipe of using a ziploc bag to pipe the frosting on, and I was amazed by how nice the cupcakes looked -- my cupcakes normally look like they've been assembled by clumsy-handed yeti, so this was a huge improvement. I can't wait for Jack to see his birthday cupcakes tonight.