So by now, I've gotten used to the cupcake baking method. I could recite the steps in my sleep. Butter, sugar, eggs, extracts, start and end with dry ingredients, alternate with wet. I feel like a pro now. I can honestly say that I've only ever made ONE batch of boxed-mix cupcakes! I feel it's a sham to use a mix and flavor it. Real bakers bake from scratch! Although it is occasionally a necessity to bake from a mix if time is not available, but I think I've gotten it down to enough of a science that using a mix would only save me a few minutes of measuring out the dry ingredients. And some dishes. I seriously LOVE baking cupcakes. I wish I could open a bakery so I actually had a place to take them. BUT, I'm going to talk to the higher-ups at my job about me selling the cupcakes at the office every once in a while to raise money for the families we serve! How cool would that be?! Cupcakes for a cause!
This installment: Small Batch Cupcakes. Coming soon: chipotle chocolate, white chocolate rasberry, halloween brownie cupcakes, and pomegranate green tea! Still to be baked: key lime, hostess style, cheesecake, and pear vanilla bean. And whatever else I come up with...
I had a former coworker request that I make her some vanilla cupcakes with no frosting, so I made a small batch right before making my Cosmopolitan Cupcakes. These cupcakes can easily be made into almost any flavor by adding different ingredients/extracts. For example, if you want to make lemon, use lemon extract and some lemon zest. I edited this post because I realized it was useless to post the original recipe since I changed it, so here's the recipe I used:
Ingredients:
2/3 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sour cream
2 tbsp. milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract*
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 c. sugar
1 egg
Instructions
- Prepare your ingredients: In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a liquid measuring cup, mix together the sour cream and milk.
- Beat butter until smooth, then add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, combining in between each addition. Add vanilla and mix until combined. Add one third of the flour mixture and combine, then add half of the milk/sour cream mixture. Add another third of the flour mixture, then the rest of the milk mixture, and finally the rest of the flour. Beat in between each addition. Batter will be think.
- Fill six cupcake liners equally- about 2/3 to 3/4 full. Bake about 15-20 minutes until toothpick inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean. Cool on wire rack before frosting.
*Once again, my obsession with using sour cream overwhelmed me. This time, I chose to use a half-and-half mixture: half fat-free sour cream and half low-fat milk. Since the recipe only made enough for six cupakes, I didn't have the heart to try one so I have NO IDEA how they came out. The person I baked them for said she ate them rapidly and thought they were fantastic and would like more please. So I guess that means they came out good. Next time I use and half-and-half mixture, I think I'm going to go full-fat on both halves. They're cupcakes, they aren't supposed to be healthy!
* If you want to make a flavor other than vanilla, simply add 1/2 tsp of a different flavor of extract instead of the vanilla or in addition to the vanilla. I find that vanilla doesn't usually clash with a flavor and can smooth out many cupcake flavors so I generally use vanilla extract in almost every cupcake.
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