Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

I am now back in Wales and back in my own kitchen, and what better way to celebrate than by baking some cupcakes! Shame that I have returned home to what can only be described as some kind of monsoon!! I've started to become quite depressed by this "summer" that is now mostly cold, rainy and stormy. Where are the barbecues and days at the beach?!  I decided to try and bring a little bit of summer into my household by baking these cupcakes. My family love strawberries and cream, desserts based around those two ingredients dominate our dinner table so they had no complaints about these!

When I think of summer food I think of fruit; particularly berries. Is there anything better than a fruit salad packed with strawberries and grapes (not a berry but I just love grapes!) on a hot summers day?! Especially topped with a mountain of cream - that was my inspiration for these cupcakes! I really liked the contrast of the velvety-soft whipped cream icing with the perfectly sweet strawberry and the perfect bit of bite and the fluffy, soft cupcake! I decided to put the strawberry into the cupcake after they had been baked because I wanted to keep the fresh texture and keep the juices in: a warm, soft strawberry was not what I had in mind for these cupcakes. I also chose whipped cream icing over my usual buttercream as it is less sweet and much lighter on an already sweet cupcake. I very nearly left the cupcakes with plain piped whipped cream but I decided at the last minute to add a little quartered strawberry into the side - how cute do they look?!