Column: Strawberry frosting forever

Strawberries.

If I could get away with typing a smiley face throughout this column I would, because I can only smile when I think about strawberries.

I can pretty much guarantee they are my favorite fruit. This is saying a lot, as I typically do not get excited about fruit.

But strawberries have been a big part of my life since I was a child.

For as long as I can remember, nearly every birthday was celebrated with my mom making me a cake. It was a simple enough recipe, a 1-2-3-4 cake from a Martha Stewart magazine.  

And Mom would whip up a batch of buttercream frosting using only unsalted butter, powdered sugar, a pinch of salt and really good vanilla. There’s no need for milk or heavy cream or any other ingredient, as long as everything is mixed well together. And then she would pour in the strawberry puree and mix all of that until everything was incorporated, and magically I would have strawberry cupcakes for my birthday dessert.

Oh man. This is the dessert I brag to my friends about. This is the cake and frosting recipe I would beg my mom to make for my birthday, to bring cupcakes into class.

And then there were the birthday tea parties. They were a big deal, as all the girls in the neighborhood would come over in their Sunday best, all dolled up to sip out of dainty cups and eat dainty tea sandwiches. And along with the strawberry cupcakes, Mom would order chocolate-covered strawberries.

Overkill? Of course not. There’s no such thing as too much strawberry, right?

Eventually I grew out of that girlish phase of wanting tea parties and fancy dresses, but the strawberry cupcakes remained.

Some years they’d be really fancy. Mom would get her special frosting tool out to decorate the tops and put frosting in the middle too. Or she’d just spread the frosting across the cupcakes — or a whole cake — without all the fussiness but still all the strawberry love.

And I would continue to bring my cupcakes to class until teachers no longer allowed it.

It was still the most requested birthday cake in the house. Dad would take a cupcake to work to go with his lunch. Mom would send me to friends’ houses with them for the families, especially if they liked the recipe.

Mom even made them for me during college. My birthday is a week after finals, so I come home and sleep for a week and wake up to strawberry cupcakes.

I know it may seem like a trivial thing, to write just about these cupcakes and the mouth-watering, fresh-tasting frosting, but it is just one of those things that is a big part of my life.