Brunch Club - The First

My friends and I are having our inaugural "Brunch Club" meeting this morning. I'm not going to review everyone's fare unless they request it, but you may see some future Brunch Club posts. Anyways...

I've been having a cupcake craving. But cupcakes are not really brunch food, especially for a brunch starting at 10am. So, I decided to go with a muffin-cupcake theory. Really, its just a muffin with frosting. Good deal, right?

I decided to lazy it up, so I bought boxed muffin mix. The reason I feel not so bad about buying boxed muffin mix is that it seems a big waste of my time to mix and sift flour/sugar/etc. I went with a box of Krusteaz Fat Free Wild Blueberry. I didn't notice the fat free part until I got home. Not a big fan of baking with the fat free, but it was fine because the frosting fattied it up. A lot.

I didn't want to be entirely non-creative with my box o' muffins, so I minced fresh strawberries and added 1/4 cup of the strawberries to the batter. I reduced the water in the recipe by 1/8th of a cup. I probably could have added more fresh strawberries, since strawberries are a rather mildly flavored fruit, especially when compared with blueberries. If I had used cranberries, then 1/4 cup would have been sufficient. But I also was aiming for a big strawberry taste. Oh well. This is what I get for being lazy. However, the muffins taste good, and considering how little time/effort it took, I was pleased with them. My only complaint about this box mix is that it makes 11, yes that's 11, muffins. Not very many, and why can't you give me enough batter to make 12?!

For the frosting I borrowed a Paula Dean recipe. You know what that means... BUTTER!!! Insane amounts of butter! The recipe is here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/red-velvet-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/index.html

Now, when I looked at this recipe, I was pretty floored by just how much cream cheese and butter it was calling for. I made half the recipe, knowing that half the recipe would probably frost 24 cupcakes easily. Paula Dean must end up with cupcakes that have more frosting than cake! So, if you cut the recipe in half you will get delicious frosting and plenty of it. I actually didn't half the vanilla, but I like very vanilla flavor. I also added about 1/4 cup minced fresh strawberries, to compliment the flavor of the muffin. Deeeeelicious. But how could it not be, with that much butter and cream cheese?!