Good Humor Style Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

When I was a kid, my absolute favorite ice cream bar in the world was the Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake Bar. Sometimes I would buy it at school, or off the ice cream truck, and eventually at our local convenient store. I will never forget that deliciously artificial strawberry flavored ice cream surrounded in those perfect crumbs, what on earth were those crumbs made of? Who knows. Unfortunately like all delicious treats from my childhood these bars are a pale comparison now to what the once were. Far fewer and very symmetrical crumbles now surround the bar, if you're lucky. The last time I bought one, a few years ago, Some of the crumbles fell off exposing all the ice cream on one side of the bar. I this one was next on the list when I finally found a decent recipe for strawberry cake. I of course modified it to the point where there is no point in posting the original, but I appreciated the starting off point. Now these cupcakes, although not difficult to make do have several steps so be prepared. The first and most important step is the crumbles. If you desire to make this process a go a bit quicker and also enjoy that wonderfully artificial strawberry flavor, you can simply buy a strawberry swirl pound cake and crumble it up. If you are a bit of a naturalist like I am, or need to be able to control and substitute ingredients you can make the strawberry swirl pound cake the day or a few days before. I found this recipe to be quite adequate. This recipe will also require two cupcake batters and two frostings so get ready. This recipe makes 36 cupcakes, trust me....you will need all of them.

Cupcake batter #1
1stick butter (room temperature)
1 egg (room temp)
2 egg whites (cold)
1 cup sugar
2/3 cups fresh hulled strawberries (pureed)
1/1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice

When making your strawberry puree make extra and store the rest in the fridge. You will need another 1/4 cup for frosting.
Cream butter and sugar together for 3 minutes. In a separate bowl whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. Measure out your strawberry puree and add vanilla and lemon to it, set aside. Once butter and sugar are creamed and fluffy, add your room temperature egg and continue to mix until incorporated. Add egg whites, and continue to mix.

Add 1/3 of your dry mixture and mix for about 30 seconds, then add 1/3 of your strawberry mixture. Continue in this pattern until everything is mixed well, scraping the bowl at least once.

Transfer your batter to another bowl and set aside.








Batter #2
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cream butter and sugar for 3 minutes. In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Measure out milk and add vanilla. Once your butter and sugar are creamed add eggs one at a time mixing for about 30 seconds in between each. Add 1/3 dry ingredients to your batter and mix, then add 1/3 of the wet and mix. Continue on this process until the batter is well combined, remember to scrape your bowl.
Remove from mixer and pour strawberry batter on top of vanilla batter. Take a spatula and very gently, fold the batters together. You do not want to combine them, you want the batter to be swirled. It's very hard to 

see in this picture that the batter is not mixed. But when the cupcakes come out of the oven it's pretty obvious.
Set out your pans and cupcake liners and fill about 3/4 of the way full. This is a big recipe so if you don't have 4 pans you may have to do two separate batches of baking. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. I didn't think they looked done, but upon using a tooth pick I saw that they were perfect, so expect them to almost appear raw because of their coloring.

Remove cupcakes from the oven and set aside to cool.

Frosting #1
4 tablespoons butter (slightly softened)
4 oz cream cheese (softened)
1/4 cup strawberry puree
2-3 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add 1 cup of sugar and continue to mix. Add puree and mix until incorporated. Add remaining sugar.





This is not a stiff frosting. Using a round tip, pipe a line down the center of each cupcake.

Frosting #2
4 sticks butter (softened)
6 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
5 cups powdered sugar

Whip butter in your electric mixer, add 2 cups of sugar and continue to mix until combined. Add milk and vanilla. Add remaining sugar one cup at a time continuing to mix until complete.
This frosting is far stiffer, but no one is going to see much of it anyway so don't worry about how pretty it is. I used a 1m tip. Pipe a stripe on either side of the strawberry frosting.

Now, remember those pound cake crumbs? Put them in a bowl and dip each cupcake in the crumbs one at a time making sure to coat them well.






They are a bit of work, but I really think they were worth it. They turned out exactly as I had hoped they would and although they took me two days to make, I'm excited to make them again.
Enjoy!