Week 29. "Rise and Shine" Orange Glazed Strawberry Cupcakes

I wanted something healthy this week...and to use up all the yummy fruit I bought, as well as the orange juice I had! These looked super great. And guess what? Pretty healthy too!



Orange Glazed Strawberry Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg plus 1 large egg white
8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) orange juice
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh strawberries
1 cup confectioners' sugar

Preparation
Make cupcakes: Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt.

Cream butter and sugar with a mixer on high speed until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and egg white until well combined. With mixer on low, beat in half of flour mixture. Beat in 6 Tbsp. orange juice, then add remaining flour mixture and beat until combined, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gently fold in chopped strawberries.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each until almost full. Bake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 22 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack for at least 5 minutes.

Make glaze: In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and remaining 2 Tbsp. orange juice until smooth. If glaze is too thick, stir in additional juice, making sure to add only 1 tsp. at a time, until you reach desired consistency. Glaze should be loose enough to spread easily on cupcakes, but not so thin that it drips.

Remove cupcakes from pan and top evenly with glaze. Let cool completely on rack, about 1 hour. Garnish each cupcake with a strawberry half, if desired.

**Hannah's Hints**

* My first attempt at a glaze was a large failure...as you can tell from the picture, it didn't work. At all. It just was really soupy and got everywhere. Rude.

* Maybe next time I would put the orange juice and confectioners sugar in alternately so that I could figure out a better texture for the glaze.

* These had a more dense texture than most cupcakes, but they were still good. Not terribly sweet, which I like...and which was made up by the incredibly sweety-sweet glaze since I was desperately attempting to make it thicker by adding large amounts of confectioners sugar. Ha.

* Refigerate definitely because there are strawberries. And they are actually better just a little chilled, though you'll need them to thaw a bit or else they'll be really dense.

* Yummy for a healthy muffin-like snack...but not the best cupcake you'll ever make.