There are certain recipes you must have in your arsenal. A good vanilla cupcake is essential in a bakers repertoire, and this recipe is just perfect! Getting the basics right will only help you when you start to go all mad scientist baker with crazy flavour and ingredient combinations.
These vanilla cupcakes are so amazing and easy to make that you’ll start questioning whether it’s time you opened up your own bakery!
This recipe is for 6 standard sized cupcakes. When I first started baking I had a small OTG and just one cupcake tray. The recipes I could find online were mostly for 12 cupcakes or more and thanks my terrible math skills I would invariably get something wrong while adapting a recipe. My personal favourite mistake was when I cut a recipe in half but forgot to reduce the baking powder and baking soda, boy was that a horrible metallic blunder! This small batch of 6 is foolproof! Comes together quickly and finishes just as fast too!
‘Room Temperature’
When you’re baking it’s always important to bring your ingredients to room temperature. I’m sure you’ve read about bringing butter to room temperature before beating it, but ‘room temperature’ can go all the way up to 40 degrees in the summers, so the butter is more like ghee at that point! Texture is a better measure and room temperature butter should be spreadable but still hold its shape. It’s also not supposed to be shiny. I find that chopping the butter into little cubes helps reach this stage faster. If your butter is at room temperature and you hit it with cold milk or eggs, it’ll seize up immediately, so make sure you also bring your other ingredients up to ‘room temperature’.
Bake your cupcakes for around 15-20 minutes. A good rule is to wait about 18 minutes and if they’ve risen beautifully, a toothpick inserted into the centre of one should come out clean.
Add anything you like to these basic cupcakes. They’re a great foundation for any crazy topping. You can whip up a fruity frosting, a chocolate ganache or a lemon glaze to top them off with. Or you could eat them as is with a cup of coffee, which is what I did!
Basic Vanilla Cupcakes
Equipment
- Oven
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 2 Tbsp Butter
- 1 Egg
- 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
- 3 Tbsp Yogurt
- 1/4 cup + 1 1/2 tbsp Milk
- 1/2 Tbsp Vanilla
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 175C
- Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl.
- Add sugar and combine.
- Add butter and combine with a hand mixer or a whisk to create a fine crumb.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, yogurt and oil.
- Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
- Add the vanilla to the milk and gradually add the milk into the bowl while whisking on low speed.
- Beat until you have a smooth mixture; around 2 minutes.
- Line a cupcake tray and fill* till about 3/4ths of the way up.
- Bake at 175C for 18-20 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test!
- Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tray for 10 minutes and then transfer onto a wire rack.
- Decorate as you please or enjoy them as is!
Notes
- Since this is quite a runny batter, I like to transfer it into a piping bag. Just snip the end off and you can avoid the scooping mess!
