Mini Strawberry Daiquiri Cupcakes

Time for another mini and alcoholic cupcake round. The first were the Mojito cupcakes as they were requested by a friend. These ones are more my style since I actually have drunk a daiquiri of the strawberry variation and know they are good, so in cupcake form it should be interesting.

The rum and sugar need to be boiled and reduced by half before anything else can happen. The smell of boiling rum is horrid in my eyes, or nose should that be, and I had to open the back door whilst it was bubbling away. Managed to get it to the right consistency and the strawberries that had be chopped beforehand were added to this to soak away for what ended up being about 50 minutes. I forgot for a little while about them and started the batter part a little late.

The batter is the usual cupcake mix of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter. This is whisked and then the egg, milk and vanilla essence infusion is added into it until smooth. Batter complete and the strawberries need to be drained from the rum concoction, saving the liquid for later, and then about a teaspoon of strawberries is placed into the bottom of each cupcake case before the batter is poured over them. I made about 30 cupcakes in all, but this did require me to put another batch in later as yet again I only have one mini cake tray. These baked for about 15 minutes and as soon as they came out the oven I poured half a teaspoon of rum mixed onto the top of each sponge and left them to cool.

My usual routine after the cakes have actually baked it to clean up the kitchen and wash anything up I may need to use to make the frosting up with. During this I poured the leftover rum mixture down the sink until it came to be reading through the next few stages and realising I needed it for the icing. Stupid me I had to them put another batch on to boil, gross and meant I had to wait even longer as the strawberries needed to soak in it again too to add their infusion. With this and my husband giving what he thought were spare strawberries to our little one to try I also ended up being short on my decorations too.

Bashed the icing together and set about smoothing it onto the cupcakes. Got the palette knife out, scooped some frosting onto it and then thought it was going to be too big to ice the sponges nicely so settled on a teaspoon as a substitute. Put a quarter of a strawberry on top of each cupcake bar the last 8 as I ran out as previously said. Pleased with the end result and my Best friend was the first to try one, she loved them and said they might even take over the red velvet cupcakes as her favourites and that is saying something. Once I forced my way in there and had one, I can confirm they do actually taste and smell like the cocktail they are named after. Looking forward to the Pina colada ones next, not so much the Brandy chocolate, Brandy is not my thing.