Strawberry Thyme Stuffed Cupcakes

Reverberations… The concept has been hovering in my mind. I doodled through high school and college physics but even I remember that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But in the case of human life, I wonder if actions should be described as having often exponentially larger reactions. One man cheats two friends. Those two friends are without money and they need their children and family to take care of them. Those children and families need to do more work to do so, and the stress affects their life adversely. You get the story.

My work has confoundingly stressful. Work environments are network of people. In general, the actions of small inconsequential people have small reverberations onto their fellow man. And some people have enormous wakes of reverberation; Madoff anyone? So this week at work, we are all standing in the wake of one man’s choice making a guess on how large the waves of change will get.

The pull and push of the ocean on your bare feet can be so comforting and enticing, but the ebb and flows of stress that will be upon me at work are frightening. So, how are we going to make it through? In part, the plan is to find those moments where all the stress exists squarely outside your consciousness—touchy feely as it is. My Belle is a whole cloud of such moments.

She is starting to love to bake. Baking with her takes some amount of concentration. I measure everything out and then bring it to the table for her to dump and stir. Inevitably overzealous actions occur; messes are created. I don’t know how to meditate but baking with Belle seems to me very close. My mind empties of work and life and instead I am focused on the actions at hand.



For these cupcakes we had too many ohio grown strawberries (great problem to have) and I needed to use them up quickly. But, I did want a cake that was dense and a little more complex than straight strawberries. Belle has been growing some herbs and vegetables with her dad (garden might be overstating it.) So, she and her dad grabbed some lemon thyme from the garden. I have been consciously adding various herbs to Belle's dishes recently so that she acquires a taste for lovely fresh food but also so that she can enjoy the tastes of her labor. Thyme might be good in savory dishes, but I think it really works well with the chocolate and strawberries in these cupcakes. Very little is used so it is subtle but I think it adds a wonderful element to the cupcakes.

I am also sending these cupcakes to Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Laurie from Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska run by Haalo of Cook (anything) Almost Once and started by Kalyn of Kalyns kitchen.

Plan
Strawberry Thyme Stuffed Cupcakes
The grape cupcakes at Cupcake Bakeshop gave me the idea for these.

For the cake, I used the recipe at a Dash of Sass but added ½ tsp fresh thyme and a dash of balsamic

For the filling, strawberries macerated with sugar, thyme and balsamic

For the frosting, chocolate/cream cheese/ buttercream (basically my coconut frosting but without coconut or lime and with chocolate) with a bit of balsamic and brown sugar

To stuff them, think jack o lantern. Take off a top, cut a bit of cake from the core. Fill and replace the top.