Cupcake & Frosting Recipe

Okay, as promised, the recipes for the cupcakes (and frosting) I made yesterday.  You're gonna love them!

Tried & True Vanilla Cupcakes

1 1/4 cake flour

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325-degrees.  Line muffin tin.  In a big mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Then add one stick of butter, cut into 1-inch cubes, mixing until you've got small pearls.  In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients: eggs, milk, vanilla.  With the mixer on medium (or, if your like me, with a wooden spoon), add wet ingredients slowly, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go.  Mix as little as you can, just until everything's incorporated.  Divide batter evenly into muffin tin and bake for 18-20 minutes.  Makes 12 cupcakes.

Variations: Add a dash of any extract you can think of: lemon, lavender, they're all good.  White chocolate chips never hurt anybody.  Try adding two bags of dry Earl Grey tea for a really elegant little cake.

Dream Buttercream Frosting

4 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter

In a large metal mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla.  Place a mixing bowl over a saucepan simmering with one inch of water and begin to whisk.  Whisk until the egg mixture is the texture of a velvety custard, technically 160-degrees if you have a thermometer.  Remove from heat, and beat for five minutes, or until eggs are light and fluffy and cooled to room temperature.  Then, add butter a tablespoon at a time, waiting for each pice to incorporate before adding the next.

The secret here is to just keep whisking.  If your frosting isn't setting up, try popping the whole bowl into the freezer for five minutes, and then beat some more.  When it happens, the frosting will come together all at once: satiny and beyond delicious.  Frosts 12 cupcakes.  (In my experience, it could have frosted probably 24 cupcakes.  I'll use the leftover for a cake.)

Variations: Here, as with all vanilla frostings, the sky's the limit.  Cocoa powder, maple, molasses, lemon and orange extract, rose and lavender -- the choices are endless.  But the beauty of this frosting is the delicacy of the vanilla flavor.

If you do decide to make the cupcakes, let me know how yours turned out!  Especially if you do any of the variations... the Earl Grey sounds particularly intriguing.