Vanilla Cupcakes

I posted about this fantastically delicious yellow cake recipe in my recent Cake Pops post but I had to share it again.  I love a nice simple yellow cake, but a good recipe seems hard to come by.  They often turn out really dense and tough.  I admit to loving yellow boxed cake, but I really wanted to find a good go-to- from scratch recipe.

I found this recipe in Nick Malgieri's Bake which is a fantastic book.  His yellow cake is moist and buttery, just perfect.  I made the recipe into cupcakes for the kid's to decorate for Valentine's Day, but of course snuck plenty for myself.  :)

The frosting I used was from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen's blog, she adds corn syrup to her basic buttercream and it was delicious and very easy to spread. And my little boy helped me with decorating. :)

Basic Yellow Cake
from Nick Malgieri

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, at room temp
3/4 cup milk
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


Set a rack at the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.  Prepare 2 muffin pans with either 24 liners or butter them generously.

Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.  Whisk eggs and milk together, set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.  Beat in vanilla extract.  Scrape down sides with rubber spatula.
On low speed add 1/4 of the flour mixture until it is absorbed.  Increase speed to medium low and beat in 1/3 of milk mixture.  Repeat this, including change of speed 2 more times. Scrape bowl and beat in remaining 1/4 of flour mixture.  Scrape again, increase speed to medium and continuously beat the batter for 3 minutes. Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and smooth top. Bake cupcake about 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean. Cool completely before frosting.


Vanilla Buttercream
from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen
(she has a great tutorial of making this buttercream, go check it out!)

1 cup salted butter, softened to room temperature
2 tablespoons milk (2% or whole)
1 teaspoon vanilla 2 or more tablespoons corn syrup
4 cups powdered sugar

Put butter, milk, and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Mix on low speed until it just starts to come together, about a minute. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Increase to medium low speed and beat for about another minute. 

Add 4 cups powdered sugar. Beat on low speed until sugar is just barely incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and increase speed slowly to medium. Beat for about a minute.
At this point, you want to check your consistency. This is very important because if your frosting is too thick, it will not spread well. If your spatula does not glide through the frosting, add about a tablespoon of corn syrup and beat on medium for about 30 seconds.

Add another tablespoon of corn syrup and beat on medium for 30 seconds. Repeat until the frosting seems to be of a good spreadable consistency. 
Once you get your frosting to a good, spreadable consistency, increase mixer speed to medium high and beat for one minute. This will get your frosting nice and fluffy. 

Linked to:
Sweets for a Saturday
Sweet Tooth Friday