This buttercream has a lovely strawberry flavour. It is not as intense as artificially flavoured buttercreams, but the taste is real; after all, the flavour comes from fresh strawberries.
I read somewhere that freezing the fruit before use intensifies the flavours, except frozen fruit makes a rather runny puree. So it’s debatable if less of a more intensely flavoured puree can result in a more intense flavoured buttercream or not.
Instead of freezing, I opted for using more strawberries. The cream remained remarkably stable and pipe-able in spite of the 3/4 cup of strawberry puree. The butter and the sugar were whipped together frothy and the strawberry puree was incorporated ever so slowly and gradually. Had I dumped together the ingredients at the beginning, it would have been a runny mess. So take care and beat this buttercream long and hard and add the strawberry puree slowly and very gradually. The recipe makes just the right amount of buttercream to decorate 18 cupcakes. Or it could be used to fill or to cover a cake. To both fill and cover a cake, double the amount. The cream will survive at room temperature, but it tastes best when chilled. Cakes decorated with this buttercream should be well chilled before slicing.
REAL STRAWBERRY BUTTERCREAM
2/3 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2-1/4 cups icing sugar, sifted
3/4 cup fresh strawberry puree
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
• Cream butter and the icing sugar until very frothy, for about 5 minutes.
• Gradually add the strawberry puree and beat between additions.
• Finally beat in the lemon juice.
