Two weekends ago I hosted a baby shower at my house for my Sister-in-Law. Along with me hosting & organising the event I made some of the eats too. One of such eats was these really great vanilla cupcakes. I have used this recipe time and time again and I have never had them flop & always seem to get great compliments on them too, which is always a plus. It makes a really light but not dry cupcake.
VANILLA CUPCAKE – INGREDIENTS
Vanilla Cupcakes – Ingredients
210g castor sugar
125g butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
280g cake flour
2ml salt
10ml baking powder
250ml milk
VANILLA CUPCAKE – METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
2. Mix the sugar and butter together until creamy and light in colour. Beat in the eggs one by one and whisk together.
Vanilla Cupcakes – Butter & Sugar
Vanilla Cupcakes – Add Eggs
3. Sieve in the flour, salt and baking powder, then add the milk and mix well.
Vanilla Cupcakes – Dry Ingredients & Milk
4. Spoon into the cupcake holders placed in a greased muffin tray and bake for 20-30 minutes at 180 C. Once cooked, allow cakes to cool.
Vanilla Cupcakes – Prepare for Baking
Vanilla Cupcakes – Baked
VANILLA BUTTERCREAM ICING
Buttercream is a type of icing used inside cakes as a coating and as decoration. Just about any buttercream recipe may be flavoured with other ingredients to change the colour/texture/flavour to suit your needs.
INGREDIENTS
175g butter
350g icing sugar
3 tbsp boiling water
½ tsp vanilla essence
VANILLA BUTTERCREAM ICING – METHOD
1. Place the butter in a mixing bowl and beat until soft.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients.
3. Beat until smooth and creamy.
4. Use immediately.
The ingredients listed above are for a basic vanilla buttercream. I wanted to make two different flavours of buttercream icing for my cupcakes so I used granadilla pulp and fresh strawberries as my flavourings. So the alterations that I made on the basic vanilla buttercream icing ingredients were as follows:
Strawberry buttercream icing:
175g butter, 350g icing sugar, fresh strawberries (pureed)
Granadilla buttercream icing:
175g butter, 350g icing sugar, 1-2tbsp boiling water, granadilla pulp
Vanilla Cupcakes – Iced & Ready to Eat
***Tip: always remember when doing icing you don’t want it to be too soft or too hard so when adding your liquid ingredient to the icing make sure you add a little at a time to get the consistency right. If it is too soft add more icing, if it is too hard add more liquid***