darla's strawberry cupcakes

i really want my cupcakes to be unique tasting desserts that you can't get anywhere else. i knew that i would be asked to make the traditional flavors like chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, and strawberry more often than anything else. my chocolate and vanilla are pretty good, but i needed to practice strawberry! plus, i had been wanting to try my aunt, darla's recipe for strawberry cake. it has fresh strawberries in it and is so, so good. again, although it does not have chocolate, it totally qualifies as dessert.

i actually had all the ingredients at the house - well, i had frozen - not fresh strawberries, and if you look closely, you can see that i used christmas mini cupcake liners. hey, it's all i had. in the first picture, i thought the green kind of made them look more strawberryer (my high school english teacher would love that word...). it also ended up being a nice accident, b/c i found out kids love them! they are just their size, plus they can get away with eating more. and so, my cupcake dots were born.