Vanilla Cupcakes

Happy Mother's Day! I've spent the last couple days baking cupcakes and making various frosting for them. As stated in a previous post, this is the preliminary steps in determining what type of frosting I want for a wedding cake that I have been asked to make. The requested type of cake was a white cake with raspberry buttercream frosting. This narrows it down a little, but there are multiple types of buttercream. I decided this week I was going to bake a bunch of cupcakes, and see if I can determine the ideal frosting for this cake. To do this, I grabbed a random white cake recipe that sounded good, and frosted them with the different frosting variations. The recipe is found on another baking blog: http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/vanilla-bean-cupcakes-recipe/. I used the recipe minus the vanilla beans. The recipe is as follows:

2 1/4 cups cake flour 

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/4 cups whole milk

4 large egg whites

1 stick unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

To make the cake, the flour, baking powder, and salt were combined in one bowl, milk and egg whites in a second bowl, and the butter and sugar in a third bowl. Start by mixing the sugar and butter together until it is homogeneous. Make sure your butter is soft, but not melted. If your butter is hard, put the entire stick in the microwave on defrost for 5 seconds on each side, then it will be the perfect consistency without melting the butter. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the sugar and again combine until it is well mixed. I do not own a stand mixer or hand mixer, I just use a silicone spatula so I can't give you speeds or times to mix. But it will be clear when the mixture looks the same everywhere. Now add about half of the egg/milk mixture and mix it in. Now, when I did this I ended up with a few small clumps in my bowl, even though I had sifted my flour. No worries! It will all work out in the next step. Keep mixing this until you feel like most of the little clumps are gone, or as best you can. Then add half of the remaining flour material (I made two batches of cupcakes. One I added half of the remaining flour, the other I accidentally added all of it... It seemed to work either way :)  ). This is where most of those clumps will be removed. It should look a lot smoother after beating the mixture with the added flour. Once the mixture is consistent, add the remaining eggs and milk, and beat the mixture until you get a nice batter consistency. Make sure everything is mixed well, and add the batter to your cupcake tray.This recipe I found to make around 20 cupcakes. I baked the cupcakes for 20 minutes at 350 F. To determine whether they are done it was recommended that you place a toothpick into the center. I didn't have a toothpick, but it was easy enough to tell by tapping on the top with your finger. When they weren't done they felt fragile and spongy. When they are done, they will feel firm and will be slightly browned on the top. This cake recipe ended up being quite delicious! I would recommend using it! And thanks to the baker that posted it! Now, time to frost them!