Pink Cupcakes

So... my daughter Aeris' third birthday is Saturday and she is looking forward to eating some cake. Because she's a girl and because she's a three year old girl there is only one color of cake she's interested in and that color is pink. I have options and lots of them, but I'm looking for something that will allow me to be creative. So, for me (not her) I've narrowed it down to two. I could either buy the only pink cake mix on the shelves that claims it's strawberry flavored, bake it and decorate it very fancy (to make up for the artificial strawberry flavor) or I can figure out how to make a
cake that tastes like strawberry but also tastes like dessert that is pink enough to meet her standards. I've decided to go with option 2 because we kinda got burnt out on that pink cake mix when they were on sale earlier this year.

What I've done today is take a delicious cake recipe that is pretty simple, doesn't require any special flour or tools and adapted it. When I began this afternoon,  I knew I wanted strawberry cake but didn't have any strawberries. I also knew from past experience that my kids would not eat cake with chunky strawberries in it. I decided to start from the freezer and work my way down looking for something that tasted like strawberries because it actually was strawberries but wasn't currently beautiful red strawberry fruit. I didn't have to look very long until I found strawberry freezer jam (I made it when the berries were insanely cheap and yummy) and I was very excited because this batch I had blended in the blender and it was completely smooth-no strawberry chunks.
Once I had settled on the jam for my flavor it was pretty easy from there. The recipe called for butter but I am running low so I substituted applesauce. I also used the jam to replace some of the sugar.  I did add 3 drops of pink food coloring because my daughter said that they weren't pink enough.

When mixing up the ingredients I decided to try the muffin method because the original recipe was very vague about how to combine everything. So I combined all of the wet ingredients and got them mixing then separately sifted the dry ingredients. I then slowly added dry to wet. I then remembered that commercial cake mix recipes tell you to beat the batter slowly for 30 seconds then rapidly for 2 min. This is how I finished mixing this recipe.
I decided to make cupcakes so I filled greased muffin cups 2/3 full and baked for 21 min at 375 degrees.

Results...
While still warm...delicious smell and beautiful color. They rose beautifully with nice round tops. Flavor was OK, there was an aftertaste from too much baking powder. There was not enough strawberry flavor and they were a teeny bit bland. Also, they were a bit too moist, the crumb stuck together-the way it does when using applesauce)-and didn't bounce back. They were perfectly sweet not too sweet and just sweet enough.
Once cooled... the flavor improved and the crumb was less sticky but more like a muffin than cake or a cupcake.

Changes...
I will be changing the ratio of jam and sugar. I will increase the jam and lesson the sugar in order to have more strawberry flavor. I will reduce the baking powder a bit and increase the salt a bit. I will try canola oil instead of the recipe's original call for butter and my substitution of applesauce and I will remeber to add the vanilla this time. Once the cupcake is up to par I will work on the frosting.