22 Mar 2012 12 Comments

Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

I have a confession to make. I know as a food blogger, I’m supposed to be all sorts of snobby about the food I eat and make everything from scratch. Oh and I’m also supposed to love eating all this fancy food and talk about organic ingredients all the time. Well, if you hadn’t noticed, I don’t do any of those things. I am a (somewhat) picky eater and I love boxed cake mixes and canned frosting. The other day when I made that…interesting cake for Einstein’s birthday, I used canned frosting and ended up dipping pretzels in it and munching on it all night (it was delicious!). Usually I make my cakes from scratch and I think that there is no cake mix (that I’ve tried) that can beat a homemade chocolate cake. However, I have never successfully made a yellow cake that I thought was better than the boxed mix. In fact, I think I’ve only ever made yellow cake from scratch once! I knew I wanted to attempt it again and make vanilla vanilla cupcakes. It was hard for me to resist adding chocolate to these cupcakes, but I resisted and they turned out great!

I made these on St. Patrick’s Day, hence the slightly green frosting. The store only had Easter pastel colors, so I couldn’t get a deep green. Oh well! I practiced piping on frosting and think I did ok-ish…I just need to make lots more cupcakes so I can become a good cake/cupcake decorator :)

I used Sweetapolita’s yellow cupcake recipe (I love her recipes and photos!). The cupcakes were easy to make and tasted delicious- the vanilla flavor really shone through. I made two different buttercream frostings to see which I liked better, but they tasted pretty much the same to me. I combined them both for the frosting recipe bellow. I’m not a huge fan of buttercream frosting because it’s so sweet, but the vanilla frosting I made wasn’t over-the-top sweet and the cupcake helped tone it down.

So…what’s the verdict? Have I turned from my evil box-mix-cake-using-ways? Hem…probably not. These yellow cake cupcakes tasted really good, but honestly I like ones you get from a yellow cake mix just as much (they taste really similar). But, if you want to make something from scratch or if you don’t like using cake mixes, these cupcakes are really good. I can definitely see myself making them again and maybe putting chocolate frosting on them :)

There’s a slight possibility that I took these photos in the morning and a tiny chance that in order to get this shot, I had to eat part of a cupcake at 7am. But that probably didn’t happen *cough cough.*

Oh and how do you like my new logo thingy? I had fun designing it this afternoon. The font for the “Amilia” is called soymilk! I think it’s super cute :)

Vanilla Cupcakes

Source: Sweetapolita

Yield: 24 standard cupcakes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (190 grams/6.5 ounces) self-rising flour

1 1/4 cups (160 grams/5.5 ounces) all-purpose flour

1 cup (2 sticks/227 grams/8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups (400 grams/14 ounces) granulated white sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup (250 mL) milk

1 teaspoon (5 mL) pure vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 standard muffin tins with cupcake liners of your choice (24 total).
2. In a small bowl, combine the flours and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.
5. Use a 3 Tablespoon cookie scoop to spoon the batter into the cupcake liners (you can use a spoon but the cookie/ice cream scoop makes them uniform in size). Bake in the middle of the oven for about 18 minutes, until the cupcakes are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into center comes out just clean (a few crumbs is okay).
6. Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Note: Makes enough to generously frost 12 cupcakes. Double this if you are making the vanilla cupcakes above.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks, 16 tablespoons) unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, whip the butter (with a stand mixer or electric hand mixer) until fluffy, about 5 minutes.
2. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add in the powdered sugar until completely incorporated.
3. With the mixer on medium speed, add the vanilla and salt and beat for about 2 minutes, until fluffy.

Note: My frosting had an almost grainy texture for some reason. Once the frosting was on the cupcakes, though, you couldn’t tell.

Store cupcakes covered or in a plastic container in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

by Amilia @justeverydayme in Baking, Dessert Tags: buttercream, cupcakes, frosting, St. Patrick's Day, vanilla, vanilla cake, yellow cake