Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcakes

I find it kind of weird that I'm intrigued with strawberry anything, but never really eat strawberry flavored anything...Does that even make sense??  For example, do you remember those neopolitan ice cream sandwiches?  I used to eat them when I was younger and I would eat the vanilla and chocolate ice cream part and then toss the strawberry part.  Why??  To this day, I have no idea!?  I would have thought I'd love the strawberry part, since it's always such a pretty colored pink!  (For those who don't know me yet, I *heart* anything pink!)  :) 

Hence, the need to make strawberry cupcakes.  It is now strawberry season and I live in Oxnard, where a lot of the strawberries are grown.  I happen to have a tray of strawberries in the fridge and decided to make cupcakes out of them.  I was thinking of the beautiful perky pink of the batter from the fresh strawberries, along with a pretty shade of pink for the frosting.  After all, when you think strawberries, doesn't images of pink come up??
Although, these cupcakes didn't turn out as pink as I would have hopes, they certainly tasted of fresh strawberries!  I decided to use a pretty floral black/white cupcake liner and some pale pink ones.  I'm sad to say that only the black/white liners showed up well.  That pink one in the back turned up like regular cupcake liners :(
I found the recipe for these strawberry cupcakes online.  They are a "Sprinkles" brand recipe.  I recently had one of their cupcakes in LA and thought they were sooo tasty!  (We got a chocolate coconut and a chocolate peanut butter..mmm, mmm!)  I had wanted to buy a few more, but at $3.50/cupcake, the baker in me couldn't do it (well, the baker in me and C, my live conscience and partner in food crime).  Didn't get a chance to try the strawberry cupcakes, so I'm not sure if these cupcakes taste like the store's cupcakes...I'm guessing not, because these were a bit buttery, in my opinion (hence, the oily looking liners!).   But still very pretty :)

I also thought I'd make this cupcake more interesting by putting a filling of custard creme, topped with some strawberry puree and then covered with strawberry buttercream!  It looked very pretty and had an element of surprise for those biting in :)

 Overall, these cupcakes were very easy on the eyes, but a bit too buttery.  I guess it doesn't help that I use buttercream as the frosting!  =/  It's a learning process...I'm hoping to create a fantastic strawberry cupcake in the future!