The Perfect Cupcake

Happy 1st birthday to Potions & Poppy Seeds! I can't believe it's been a whole year! And what a year it's been for my little blog - in just 12 short months we reached 15,000+ page views, and I get emails every day from Pinterest letting me know that people are happily pinning recipes and crafts from Potions & Poppy Seeds. So thank you, readers!

In honor of my baby's 1st birthday, I decided to make some cupcakes. This recipe is very simple, but very delicious. I will admit - in the past, I've been a huge fan of making cakes/brownies/etc. from a box, and this is one of my 1st REAL attempts at baking from scratch. Honestly, after eating these babies, I will never again make cupcakes from a box mix.

Ingredients:

Yellow Cupcake Batter:

• 3 cups sifted cake flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups milk

Buttercream Icing:

• 1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 2 Tbsp milk

How to:

To prepare batter:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with baking cups.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
• In a second large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add flour mixture alternatively with milk, beating well after each addition. Continue beating 1 minute.
• Fill baking cups 2/3 full.
• Bake 18-20 min or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean. 
• Cool cupcakes in pan on cooling grid for 5 min. Remove from pan and cool completely.

To prepare icing:

• In a large bowl, beat shortening and butter with an electric mixer. Add vanilla.
• Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often.
• When all the sugar has been mixed in, the icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
• Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

The batter recipe makes 24 cupcakes, and the icing recipe makes about 3 cups. The cupcake recipe yields really light cupcakes - the consistency of mine was somewhere between an angel food cake and normal cake from a box, which I really enjoyed. The icing is also quite light tasting (although it clearly is the farthest you can get from 'light' - just look at the recipe!). I'm calling this recipe The Perfect Cupcake, because my coworkers raved about these, and Jake ate 3 cupcakes in less than an hour. I dare you not to eat more than one!

So, happy birthday again to my blog! And a special thanks to all of you for sticking with me over the past year!

Enjoy!