Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A little bit of heaven in your mouth cupcakes.

My week long frenzy to make a perfect cupcake has come to an end. I got on google and racked my brain as to what I was doing wrong. I tried the two leading well known cupcake recipes. Nadda. I had muffins and not cupcakes. Very disappointed. Then I went old school. Talked to a few older ladies on how the heck they make fluffy, yet moist cupcakes.

What they had said, I knew already.

With my newly reconfirmed knowledge, I forged ahead and made another batch. This time I prayed that they weren't destined for the trash can.

I will forewarn that you will not get the same results if you sub anything other then flavor add ins like coconut, etc.


I got 36 cupcakes from this recipe. The frosting makes enough to frost all the cupcakes. I had a container left because I couldn't stop eating the cupcakes when they came out of the oven.




Ingredients:


1 cup of softened to room temp butter
1 and 3/4 cups of Bakers Sugar.
8 egg yolks
3/4 and 1/4 cup of milk
2 Teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 cups of cake flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

For frosting:
1 cup butter softened to room temp
3 cups confectioners sugar
6 oz of good white chocolate such as Ghiradelli baking chips. Which is a little less then half a bag if it's 11 0z.
3-5 Tablespoon of heavy cream or half and half
2 Tablespoons of Vanilla extract.



Directions:
1- Pre-heat oven to 350 ° F. Line muffin pans with cupcake papers.

2- Shift together all the dry ingredients.

3- Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy, at least five minutes on slow speed. If you are not doing this it's not fluffy.

4- Add in the egg yolks one at a time and then add in the vanilla.

5- Add in the flour and milk alternatively until well incorporated. I had to use a little more then 3/4 cup of milk, so keep at least 1/4 on hand. You want thick and loose but not runny.

6- Bake in your oven middle rack in the center until they are lightly brown and the largest cupcake when poked with a knife of toothpick comes clean.

*Tip*

I always remove my cupcakes out of the pan as soon as they get out of the oven because I find they tend to dry out a little bit from over cooking from the hot pan. It takes awhile to get this method down without burning yourself.

For frosting:

1- Cream butter with sugar on low speed for at least five minutes until fluffy.

2- While creaming butter and sugar, melt the white chocolate in the microwave until melted, 40 seconds at a time, stir after each time until melted. Let cool until warm, not hot.

3- Add in vanilla, melted chocolate
and two tablespoons of half and beat on high speed for at least six minutes until light and fluffy. If it's too thick add in some half and half. If it's too thin add in some powder sugar.

4- Since I lost my frosting bag I used a ziplock bag and snipped off the end of corner and gently squeezed.

Final thoughts:
Although I grew up on cake mixes from a box, this was a change. It tastes better then a boxed mix and by far isn't as hard as I though and took about the same amount of time to make. I will continue to use this recipie and with that...

This recipe gets four stars out of five.

Enjoy!