Recipe Share: Vanilla Cupcakes Two Ways

For Sophie’s birthday, I baked vanilla cupcakes. Originally, it was intended for the cupcake making contest but I somehow ran out of time and wasn’t able to make the frosting. I decide to just serve the cupcakes as dessert and sans the frosting, they got wiped out..

Since it was my first time to make vanilla cupcakes, I couldn’t figure out which recipe would be better so I tried two versions: one from Eat, Bake, Sell cookbook and the other from Glorious Treats.

Here are the the two recipes: 

Vanilla Cupcake:

1 cup all purpose flour

2 cups cake flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 tsps. vanilla extract

1 cup whole milk

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper cups. Set aside.

2. In a bowl, combine the all purpose flour and cake flours with baking powder and salt. Blend together.

3. In a mixer bowl, cream butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, one at a time. Stir in vanilla.

4. At low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with milk, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.

5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gently fold into the creamed mixture. 

6. Scoop batter into the muffin pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until done. 

 I got a little carried away and made rainbow cupcakes out of these, inspired by her Icings cake. I divided the mixture into three bowls and dropped a little of different colors on each bowl.Just a little because I wanted pastel colors. Placed a little of each colored batter in each cupcake liner and swirled with the other end of a clean teaspoon. I found the teaspoon more effective in swirling than the toothpick since I wanted to make big swirls.

This recipe gave me a denser cupcake than the recipe below. I was able to make 21 mini cupcakes with this recipe that taste really good.

The other version from Glorious treats, fluffier and more moist but not too greasy that my cupcake liners’ design was still visible after baking. This recipe yielded 16 cupcakes.

Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes

Recipe by Glorious Treats

Yields- 15-16 cupcakes

1 1/4 cups cake flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup oil (vegetable, canola or extra light olive oil)

1/2 cup buttermilk

(or 1/2 cup milk plus 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar or lemon juice- add acid to the milk then set aside for 5 minutes before using)

Directions:

* Preheat oven to 350*F.

* In a medium bowl, add cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Stir together with whisk, and set aside.

* In the bowl of an electric mixer, add eggs and beat 10-20 seconds.  Add sugar and continue to beat on medium speed about 30 seconds.  Add vanilla and oil, beat.

* Reduce mixer speed to low and slowly add about half of the flour mixture.  Add half of the milk, then the rest of the flour and the rest of the milk.  Beat until just combined.  Scrap down the side of the bowl.

* The batter will be thin.   Pour batter into a muffin pan prepared with paper liners.  Fill liners about 2/3 full.

* Bake cupcakes in pre-heated oven for 12-14 minutes.

* Cool in pan 1-2 minutes, then remove cupcakes from pan (carefully) and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Happy Saturday everyone! Happy baking :)