Once I was 14, I bought a replica of Fergal Connolly’s 500 Cupcakes: The Solely Cupcake Compendium You’ll Ever Want. I had simply developed an curiosity in baking and having this ebook at residence spelled doom for my dad and mom and their kitchen: I spent afternoons and weekends creating a large mess whipping up every kind of cupcakes, some extra scrumptious than others. I begged my dad and mom for a stand mixer, they usually acquiesced after they realized that baking was in all probability a more healthy behavior for his or her adolescent daughter than…another habits. I introduced cupcakes to each occasion, each bake sale, each household gathering, foisting them on anybody who paused to ask how I used to be doing. The one recipe that by no means let me down was the vanilla cupcake, which I turned to time and again. It was the gang favourite, the one my mates anticipated me to indicate up with.

Once I noticed that my take a look at kitchen colleague Anna Theokisto developed a recipe for vanilla cupcakes, I jumped on the probability to make them. To provide you with the perfect cupcakes, Anna methodically examined each recipe variable doable—together with one of the best type of flour, fats, and liquid to make use of—till she landed on what one other coworker describes because the “good vanilla cupcakes.” Anna’s recipe hit all the best spots: With a fantastic, tender crumb and simply the correct quantity of vanilla, these cupcakes are simple sufficient to make on a weeknight, but in addition particular sufficient for a celebration. In different phrases, they’re the whole lot I would like in a cupcake. Right here’s how one can make them.

5 Ideas for Making the Finest Vanilla Cupcakes

Cream the butter and sugar nicely. As former editor Stella Parks famous in her traditional vanilla butter cake recipe, butter is finest overwhelmed when it’s at tender however cool room temperature—ideally 65ºF or 18ºC. At this temperature, butter is pliable sufficient to beat with the sugar, which aerates the batter. Adequately creaming the butter and sugar traps air bubbles within the batter; because the cake bakes within the oven, these bubbles broaden, serving to the cake rise. “With out these air bubbles,” Stella writes, “butter and sugar type an ultra-dense paste that offers muffins the feel of a moist brick.” 

Use room temperature components. As a result of we’re utilizing room temperature butter, it’s important that every one the opposite components are additionally at room temperature. Incorporate chilly eggs or milk into the batter, and likelihood is you’ll curdle the batter, ruining the emulsion and aeration you labored so onerous to attain when creaming the butter and sugar. 

Attain for bleached cake flour. Flours have completely different protein contents, which point out gluten potential. The upper a flour’s protein content material, the extra gluten it might probably doubtlessly develop in a dough or batter. Whereas all-purpose flour usually incorporates 9 to 12 p.c protein, cake flour usually ranges from seven to eight p.c protein, making the latter best for tender muffins and pastries. Not like unbleached cake flour, bleached flour is handled with chlorine. As Stella notes in her information to the ingredient, this offers the batter extra time to rise, and produces “super-lofty” and well-risen muffins.

Alternate the dry components and liquids. It could be tempting so as to add all of the flour or liquid directly, however resist, as it might probably overwhelm the batter. Alternating the components on low pace ensures that every is correctly included, leading to a clean, evenly combined batter.

Beautify with a piping tip. For that extra-special contact, match a piping bag along with your favourite tip and pipe a dramatic rosette, cute little stars, or delicate petals along with your frosting of selection. And when you can’t be bothered? Slathering the icing on with an offset spatula is simply fantastic.