I do not think I need to put much effort into describing what you can expect from these cupcakes. After all, I am sure that everyone has ever tried meringue with strawberries and you know how delicious it is. My intention in this recipe is that the cupcakes are pure strawberry flavour, adding to the dough lyophilized pieces of strawberries that give it a super concentrated flavour and also stuffing the cupcakes with homemade strawberry jam (recipe here).
Once more a back to basics recipe. I really enjoy making recipes like that, simple and with things you have at home. One of those kind, when you get up on a Sunday and say; What can I prepare today? And you get what you have on hand and end up with something like that. Although I also enjoy a lot of trying rare ingredients and new combinations, well, I guess I generally enjoy baking, that´s it 😊
It also happens that when you make as many sweets as I do, it is very easy to have spare yolks or egg whites from previous desserts. And what do you do with them? Well in my case, the yolks I freeze them, and that can be used later for creams, etc. But the whites are another story … Easy resource: Meringue!!
But the truth, the truth is that …. I missed my blowtorch!!!!!!!! Fire, uuuuiiiiii !!!!!! Yeaaaah, that’s the truth! I was expecting the moment to make another recipe with meringue where to use my dear and cute mini blowtorch.
In fact, I think I have found the motivation of my life, I could spend whole days caramelizing meringue, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with my mini torch, just it and me burning meringue … It’s like painting Pictures seriously, it’s art! You can draw figures and let yourself be hypnotized by the flame.
If at this point you have not run or you have not realized that I am completely crazy and that I have a soul of pyromaniac, it is because you would be perfect companions for me in my days of caramelizing Merengue with torch. Join me, you can start practicing with these cupcakes!
Strawberry Meringue Cupcakes
Ingredients
- CUPCAKES:
- 125g of flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 1 pinch of salt
- 100g sugar
- 2 handfuls of chopped lyophilized strawberries
- 120 ml sunflower oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tbsp and 1/2 milk
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 75 g strawberry jam for the filling
- Fresh strawberries for decoration
- MERINGUE:
- 200 g sugar
- 60 ml water
- 4 egg whites
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 drops of vinegar
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 170ºC and prepare a tray for cupcakes with 12 cups. In the bowl of the mixer (if you do not have it, use a large bowl and you can mix by hand) sieve the flour and mix with the baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add the sugar, the lyophilized strawberries, the oil and the eggs. Mix, starting at low speed so that the flour does not come flying, and once they have been integrated slightly raise the speed to medium-high and hit for 1 minute. Stir in milk and vanilla extract and whisk for about 30 seconds more at high speed.
Distribute the dough evenly into the cups filling only up to ¾ parts of their capacity, it would come to be like 1 tablespoon of well-filled dough per cup. Bake at 170 ° C for 22 minutes. Check by puncturing the center of one of the cupcakes with a toothpick that are well made before removing them from the oven. Cool completely on a rack.
To prepare the meringue, heat the sugar with water in a saucepan. Introduce a kitchen thermometer to control the temperature of the syrup.
Meanwhile, beat the egg whites in the bowl of the mixer with the salt and vinegar at a low speed, so that they start being foaming. When the temperature of the thermometer reaches 100 ° C, raise the speed of the mixer to medium-high.
When the temperature of the syrup reaches 118 ° C, remove from the heat and without stopping the mixer, pour in the whites very slowly and in the form of yarn while still beating the whites at medium-high speed. Be very careful and do not pour the syrup on the moving rods or you can splatter and burn. Continue beating at high speed for about 10 more minutes, until the meringue cools.
To decorate the cupcakes make a hole in the center. Fill with the strawberry jam the hole you just made.
Frost the cupcakes with meringue, I have used a spatula directly for a rustic touch, but you can use the piping bag with the tip that you like. To finish, lightly caramelize the meringue with the cooking torch. Be careful and do not get too close to the cups, because being paper they burn easily.
Sweet dreams,
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