Makes 2 dozen large cupcakes
Jessie Rae Nakoneczny, executive pastry chef, is the founding pastry chef at Hearth and Hill, and she was promoted to her Leave Room for Dessert Eateries role in Park City, Utah, upon its formation in 2021. She is based at Hill’s Kitchen, where you can watch her create irresistible pastries, desserts, and other goodies. Jessie Rae, a Canadian, honed her skills at Montage Deer Valley, Stein Eriksen Lodge, Deer Valley Resort and Sundance Resorts, as well as Alaska’s The Saltry.
Ingredients
- Cake flour 5 1/4 cup
- Baking powder 1 tbsp
- Salt 1 1/2 tsp
- Sugar 3 1/2 cup
- Whole milk 1 3/4 cup
- Passion fruit puree 1/2 cup
- Olive oil 1 1/2 cup
- Whole egg 1 cup
- Vanilla extract 1/3 cup
American Style Buttercream
- Soft butter 2 cup
- powder sugar 4 cup
- salt 1/2 tsp
- heavy cream 1-2 Tbs
- vanilla extract 1 1/2 tsp
- Fresh Strawberries 1 lb
- Granulated sugar 1/4 cup
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
- Sift dry ingredients together.
- Whisk wet ingredients together separately.
- Mix all ingredients together by hand and pour into tray.
- Bake at 350F for about 10-20 minutes, depending on the size of the cupcakes you are making.
- Check the doneness of the cupcakes by touching the middle to see if it springs back.
- Let cool.
- Make your buttercream by creaming the soft butter, salt, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and heavy cream in a bowl until it is light and fluffy.
- Scrape the bowl all the way to the bottom and mix again.
- Wash, chop, and roast the strawberries in a 400ºF oven.
- Stir after 10 minutes in increments of 10 minutes until the strawberries are jammy, thick, and most of the liquid has evaporated.
- Let this jam cool down.
- Add about 1/4 cup of jam to your buttercream and cream them together.
- If it breaks, heat up the bowl while it is mixing with a blowtorch; this should bring it back together. You can also add a little more powdered sugar to bring the buttercream back together if you do not have a blowtorch.
- Pipe a rosette of buttercream on the cupcake.
- Using a hot spoon, press a small divot into the middle of the cupcake.
- Use any leftover strawberry jam to dollop these divots.
