May is a busy month for us, celebration wise.  We have three birthdays and also Mother’s Day to celebrate.  But they are fun gatherings and always involve food.

I have been looking for a special dessert for Mother’s Day and I decided on Strawberry Cupcakes with a Strawberry Buttercream Frosting.  My mom is no longer with us, but I just know she would have loved these cupcakes.

My mom was a true southern lady but she really didn’t care for cooking.  It was my dad who did all of the cooking.  While she may not have been a cook, she was a great gardener.  She always had beautiful flowers and a vegetable garden.  The green beans she grew were amazing.  I believe they were called Kentucky Wonders. I wish I had pictures of the beautiful flowers and vegetables she grew.

In the USA Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of the month, which is May 8th this year.  It is the day of the year that we honor the millions of mothers across the USA.  We often give cards, flowers and gifts to our mothers. For some lucky moms, it may mean breakfast or dinner cooked for them.

The American version of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914.  She did not care for the way the holiday became so commercialized and actually tried to have it removed from the calendar.  Here is an interesting article about how mothers have been honored throughout history.

Now the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of “a light cake to be baked in small cups” was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats in 1828 by Eliza Leslie.  A free digital version of her cookbook is available from Archieve.Org.

Notes:
1.  I used thawed frozen unsweetened strawberries for the puree.
2.  Frost or pipe the cupcakes. I used a Wilton 2D tip for piping.  Frosting needs to be fairly stiff but still spreadable.
3.  If you don’t have cake flour on hand, use this easy substitution:  1 cup all purpose flour minus two tablespoons all purpose flour plus two tablespoons cornstarch equals 1 cup cake flour.  Be sure to sift the flour and cornstarch together.