Strawberry Ricotta Cupcakes

Project Pastry Queen-ers took this week's Strawberry Ricotta Cake recipe in different directions. The Foodie Bride baked up the original dome-shaped cake but included variations of her own, including a home-made strawberry sauce and cream cheese-ricotta filling. Fake Ginger, this week's host, opted for a miniature cupcake version. Thank goodness I checked her blog before I started to bake. As I was already strapped for time, having spent the weekend in San Diego celebrating a trio of 30th birthdays, I really didn't have the time to follow the traditional recipe, which calls for a 45-minute baking time and 1-2 hour cooling time. Amanda's cupcake version only requires ~10 minutes to bake and was definitely a lot easier to transport to work than the dome cake. The general concensus was that the cake doesn't seem very stable and probably won't travel well.

The batter is essentially an angel food cake and tasted pretty yummy with all the orange and lemon zest. With that said, I can't say that this recipe lends well to making cupcakes. I didn't fill my cupcakes all the way to the top so my first batch ended up shrinking substantially after it cooled down, to the point where it no longer held its shaped. So keep that in mind if you make these - fill them up all the way to the top. Then your cupcakes will fluff up nicely like the ones pictured below.



The lightness of the batter made it very difficult to cut holes in the middle of the strawberry ricotta filling - I had to use my cheese knife to drill into them.



The cupcakes came out a bit plain looking. I ended up making some sugared almonds to put on top to give the cakes some texture and crunch.



Overall, the cupcakes came out pretty yummy. I can't say it was super baker-friendly but I'm glad I had the chance to try out the cupcake version of an angel food cake. Makes me think I might be able to turn my strawberry chiffon cake into cupcakes...

Head over to Fake Ginger for the full recipe!