strawberries & cream cupcakes

These are currently my favorite cupcakes. We had some extra strawberries, so I made yellow cupcakes, filled them with a tart strawberry jam, and topped them with a lightly sweetened cream cheese frosting. They're unbelievably good.

They're cute frosted, but I prefer to just cut the cupcakes in half and slather frosting and jam on each half.

strawberries & cream cupcakes:

yellow cupcakes (The New Best Recipes, editors of Cook's Illustrated)
1.5 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
8 TB unsalted butter, softened
.5 C sour cream
1 large egg, plus 2 yolks, at room temperature
1.5 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 mini muffin tins and line with muffin cups. Mix dry ingredients. Add butter, sour cream, egg, yolks, and vanilla, and beat until smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds. Scrape sides of bowl with rubber spatula and stir by hand until smooth and no flour pockets remain.Divide among mini muffin cups. Bake until cupcake tops are pale gold and cupcakes pass toothpick test.

strawberry jam
1 C strawberry puree
.25 C sugar
1 TB pectin

Heat the strawberries, sugar, and pectin on medium until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat. Allow to cool before using.

cream cheese frosting
16 oz cream cheese
.5 C butter
2 C powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla