There are certain recipes you must have in your arsenal. A good vanilla cupcake is essential in a baker’s 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!
- Equipment
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 to 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! Since I bake so often and in large quantities, I love the Wonderchef 48 Litre OTG but if you’re a casual baker or you’ve feeding a smaller bunch, the Wonderchef 9 Litre OTG might suit you better. Since this recipe calls for creaming butter and sugar together, I would strongly suggest you get yourself the Crimson Edge Hand Mixer. It not only looks totally awesome (who doesn’t love that red!) but it’s also surprisingly light! I loved how easy it was to attach and detach the whisks and the machine itself fit perfectly in my hand, making speed adjustments a breeze. A good hand mixer is a baker’s best friend and while you can make this with just a whisk, a hand mixer just makes it so much easier.
- Room Temperature
When you’re baking it’s always important to bring your ingredients to room temperature. I’m sure you’ve read about bring 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 it 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!
Ingredients
- 3/4th cup + 2 Tbsp Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4th tsp Salt
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 2 Tbsp Butter
- 1 Egg
- 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
- 3 Tbsp Yogurt
- 1/4th cup + 1 1/2 Tbsp Milk
- 1/2 Tbsp Vanilla
Instructions
- Pre Heat Oven to 175ºC
- 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.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, yogurt and oil.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
- Add the vanilla to the milk and gradually add the milk to the bowl while mixing on a low speed.
- Beat until you have a smooth mixture, around 2 minutes.
- Line a cupcake tray and fill till about 3/4th full.
- Bake at 175ºC 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 to cool completely.
- Decorate them as you please or enjoy them as is!
About the blogger
Sneha Sundar is the creator of You Dim Sum, You Lose Some; a philosophy she adopts both in and out of the kitchen!
No Comments