Key Lime Cupcakes and Strawberry Ganache

My daughter's 2nd birthday was this weekend and we all had a blast! A slip'n'slide, water balloons, and squirt guns made for the perfect, hot, July, toddler's birthday party. One tradition we have as a family for all the children's birthdays is baking our own birthday cakes/cupcakes. For my son's 2nd birthday I got so creative I created a cake fire truck! This birthday I wanted to do things a little different. Instead of putting my decorating skills to test I decided to try new flavors and improve my baking skills. I knew I wanted to do a strawberry filling to compliment my fun fetti vanilla cake and came across a very simple recipe for strawberry ganache (strawberries/cream/white chocolate). It was amazing, but what was even more amazing than that was my key lime cupcakes, a recipe I just happened to roll across in my search for a strawberry filling. Let me tell you I could easily eat a dozen of the key lime cupcakes! So... here is goes, I'm sharing my "out-of-this-world" cupcake recipes for strawberry ganache filling and the key lime filling with meringue topping.

The vanilla cake recipe I use is found on the back of the Pillsbury Softasilk Cake Flour, it is always a crowd pleaser and you can add a few extras to make it your own. for my Strawberry Ganache I added sprinkles to make it a fun fetti cupcake. Also the frosting I used for the fun fetti cupcakes is my cream cheese buttercream frosting you can find the recipe under my mint chocolate cupcakes post.

Strawberry Ganache 

This is a super easy recipe and taste great in vanilla cake and would be heavenly in a chocolate cake as well. The ingredients you will need are:

1/4 cup strawberries

3/4 cup heavy cream

7 oz. white chocolate

1) Chop the strawberries up into small chunks.

2) In a small bowl combine the strawberries and heavy cream, place in refrigerator over night.

3) Drain the cream and strawberries mixture into a sauce pan using a wire mesh strainer. Make sure you press the strawberries down to get as much cream as possible off the berries. Scrape the bottom of the strainer with a spatula to get the excess cream off.

4) Heat the cream over medium heat, when the mixture begins to boil pour in chocolate stirring from the center out until the chocolate is completely melted.

5) Place in refrigerator for 10 minutes.

6) Pipe or spoon filling into cupcakes or use as a filling in cakes.

Key Lime Filling and Meringue Topping

If you were amazed at how easy the strawberry ganache filling is to make just wait until you read how easy it is to make the key lime filling! The ingredients needed are:

1/3 cup key lime juice*

14 oz. can condensed milk

*if you can't find key lime juice use 1/2 lime juice and 1/2 lemon, that's what I ended up using

1) Stir together condensed milk and key lime juice

2) That's it! Pipe it into cupcakes :)

For the meringue it was also easy, just takes a little patience.

3 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tarter

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Beat egg whites and cream of tarter until soft peaks form.

2) Add 1/3 of the sugar and beat for 1 minutes, repeat until sugar is gone.

3) Pipe on top of cupcakes. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes.

Of course I made way too many cupcakes, but still enjoying them!