Perfect Easter Cupcakes

If you read my St. Patrick’s Day Cupcake post (here) a few weeks ago you’ve already seen this recipe. I did things a little different to make these more for Easter. I just had different liners and decorated them differently however everything else is still the same. I’m just on a huge cupcake fix at the moment.

Recipe found here.

Ingredients

· 1¼ cups cake flour or Canadian bleached all-purpose flour-I used regular unbleached flour

· 1¼ tsp baking powder

· ½ tsp baking soda

· ½ tsp salt

· 2 large eggs

· ¾ cup sugar-I used about ½ cup

· 1½ tsp pure vanilla extract

· ½ cup canola oil

· ½ cup buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F and line a cupcake/muffin pan with cupcake liners.

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together 1¼ cups cake flour (or Canadian flour), 1¼ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp baking soda and ½ tsp salt. Set flour mix aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 2 eggs with the whisk attachment on medium speed (15-20 seconds).

3. Add ¾ cup sugar and continue to beat on medium speed (30 seconds).

4. Add vanilla and oil and beat on medium speed (1 minute)

5. Reduce mixer speed to medium/low and slowly add about half of the flour mixture. Add half of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour mix and the rest of the milk. Beat until just combined and smooth, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl. The batter should be thin.

6. Pour batter into a lined muffin pan. Fill to about ½ full.

7. Bake for 12 -14 minutes at 350°F. Let them cool in the pan for a couple minutes, then remove.

8. Once the cupcakes are cooled to room temp, pipe on the frosting.

Notes

A note about the flour: all-purpose works, it just does won’t produce a cupcake quite as soft as cake flour or Canadian Flour.

Cream Cheese Icing

Recipe found here.

Ingredients

· 4 ounces unsalted butter, softened

· 4 ounces cream cheese, softened

· 2 cups powdered sugar-I used 1 ½ of regular sugar

· 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

For my icing I kind of just kept doing taste tests since I had to make enough for 3 batches of cupcakes. I would add a little more butter than cream cheese and not as much sugar as directed. At one point I even stopped measuring. Just make sure the icing is fully smooth because when you start using all the piping tools you don’t want to start putting icing on the cupcakes and have a piece of hardened butter get stuck and mess up the whole art of the icing. I also added on some extra decorations that I got a few months back. They are Wilton and found at Michael’s.