One night, I woke up from a very odd dream In this dream, I was making a cake that was very tall and was shaped like a heart. This wasn't odd. What was odd was the fact that I had subconsciously decided to frost this cake with strawberry frosting on the inside of the cake and mint frosting on the outside of the cake. I hadn't ever thought of this combination before. But, fortunately, this idea stuck with me.
Several days later, I discovered the perfect cake to complement my strawberry and mint frostings. Lime cake. The fact that this didn't come to me earlier is a bit appaling since my favorite fruity feminine drink is a Strawberry Mojito.
The lime cake recipe I used turned out very moist and delicious! It used buttermilk, which I think complemented the flavor very nicely. The recipe also called for lime zest, but I didn't have a zester, so I just chopped up tiny pieces of lime peel and it still turned out wonderful. I also made mini-cupcakes instead of regular sized cupcakes. I think this really concentrated the flavor and made each bite of cupcake taste that much better.
The frostings were definitely what I focused on since they were literally the "stuff of dreams" and they were fantastic! The mint frosting was really easy. I made a buttercream frosting to which I added a bit of mint extract and a tiny bit of food coloring. The strawberry frosting wasn't as easy. I wanted to use fresh strawberries. And I did. But the strawberry puree was a little too runny and I didn't get it to a frosting-like consistency; however, it was very much like a strawberry butter and it was quite tasty as it was.
In order to get the cupcakes you see here, I cut the tops off the cupcakes and put about a teaspoon and a half of the strawberry butter on the bottom half of the cupcake then replaced the cupcake top. On top of each cupcake, I piped some mint frosting then topped the each with a quarter of a strawberry and a mint leaf.
