Right about this time every winter, I start to get a craving for the taste of summer—and for me, summer tastes like sweet, mouthwatering strawberries.
At the same time, I do a lot of baking this time of year. Strawberry frosting, dolloped on cakes and cupcakes, would be the perfect way to combine my yearning for summer and my favorite winter pastime. But out-of-season strawberries can be bland, and it’s hard to pack their flavor into a batch of frosting. Luckily for me, the best strawberry frosting bypasses fresh fruit altogether, opting for freeze-dried strawberries instead.
Freeze-dried strawberries are dehydrated without heat, meaning that they still have all the peak summer flavor they started with but none of the moisture that can turn frosting into a runny mess. As an extra perk, they make the frosting a pleasing shade of pastel pink.
This frosting recipe beats the store-bought stuff every time, and it’s just one of several homemade frosting recipes from The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs. With this book, kids can make their own cakes and cupcakes, flavor frosting with everything from chocolate to Nutella, and learn how to frost like a pro.
