A classic dessert that’s worth bringing us to the future? Check out this Vanilla cupcake recipe and be part of its adventures!

Cupcake is a small cake designed to serve one person. Judging by the calories stuffed in one of today cupcakes though, these cakes could even be served to a family of 4 easily.

Cupcakes were originally, as their name suggests, cakes made in cups. To make things even plainer for the average home baker, recipe ingredients were also indicated in cups. If that wouldn’t be enough, recipe developers went to great lengths to smooth out any possible hiccups by creating terms that leaves little to none to imagination, such as quarter cakes or 1234 cakes which meant to signal the amount of ingredients needed for the making.

One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour and four eggs, all people had to remember to feel themselves like true bakers in their kitchen. Although it wasn’t a Dobos torte or Mount Blanc, it was way more than today’s “adding water and eggs to cake mix”, not to mention the disgrace of using ready-made crepe mix or batter.

Cupcakes can be made of anything that is suitable for layered cake or even those that aren’t if they can hold the weight of some frosting.

Although layering of cupcakes hasn’t really taken off yet, filling them, by carving out some space for filling or simply injecting some stuff in, is quite popular. The earmark of cupcakes is the frosting though, that is applied on top in various flavors, types, and shapes.

Cupcakes have made the transitions to modern times and ensured their places for the coming era by adopting to the requirement of new generations. Cupcakes can be made quickly and easily with ingredients that we mostly have at hand, with tools that can be found at every place modern humans inhabit.

Using a single cup and a microwave oven, we can make mug cakes in almost no time and so little effort, that using instant cake mix looks like we are preparing for a baking contest.

Apart from a few defiant souls who still use ramekins or small cups, classic cupcakes -that were established themselves in the era when industrial revolution and globalization allowed people not just to have enough money to buy things a world away, but they could do it for less money that it had been produced locally- are still made using muffin tins.

Once a muffin comes out of the muffin paper, or in these more modern times, silicon cushioned muffin tin, and gets the first layer of frosting, it officially becomes a cupcake.

Toppings are an essential part of making classic cupcakes, even if mug cakes -that are essentially the same- don’t have such requirement. Luckily, they are named mug cakes anyway so we shouldn’t be worried about them now.

Frosting on cupcakes can be anything that is creamy and sweet from simple whipped cream, through hazelnut spread to the seven hells of buttercream, like in our case, it’s our favorite buttercream, the forgiving, yet light hence delicious German buttercream.

Since we make vanilla cupcake here, it only seems to fit to top it with vanilla frosting but there are no rules of what a true vanilla cupcake should look like.

Sure, some purist would argue that topping vanilla with anything else but vanilla would overpower the delicate flavor -which is actually just a smell registered by our nose through the hole at the back of our throat- but since no cupcake falls under Protected Designation of Origin, we can and should do all in our power to save them in any form we can for generations to come.

Even if that sometimes means adding a bit of chocolate in or around the cake.

Ingredients

Muffins

3 medium / 150g Eggs
½ teaspoon / 3g Salt
10 tablespoons / 150g Butter (melted)
2 tablespoons / 30g Honey or sweetener of choice to taste
1½ teaspoon / 7.5ml Vanilla
1 cup / 240ml Buttermilk or Whole milk
2½ cups / 300g Flour
1½ teaspoon / 4g Baking powder
1 teaspoon / 6g Baking soda (optional for added flavor and airiness – it may discolor the muffins if left too long in the oven.)

German buttercream

For more buttercream check out: Buttercream Frosting Recipe

2 cups / 500ml Milk
2 medium / 50g Egg yolks
6 tablespoons / 45g Corn starch
1 cup / 200g Butter
Sweetener of choice to taste

Kitchen utensils

Muffin forms

How to make Vanilla cupcake

Muffins

Whisk eggs until light yellow.
Keep on whisking and incorporate salt, melted butter, honey or sweetener of choice then vanilla and buttermilk.
Whisk in flour. If we have an electric mixer, we can save time by throwing everything together and let the machine do the hard work but otherwise follow the steps to easily incorporate all the ingredients.
If buttermilk is used, now it is the time to add the baking powder and the optional baking soda then whisk it in as fast as we can. Adding baking powder earlier will result reaction of the baking powder with the acid of the buttermilk which would ruin the fluffiness of our cake.
Quickly spoon the muffin forms up until about ¾ height.
Place the vanilla muffins into the middle rack of a 360°F / 180°C preheated oven until the top turns golden brown which should happen when a kitchen thermometer registers 210°F / 99°C, about 40 minutes.

German buttercream

For more detailed instructions check out: Buttercream Frosting Recipe

Warm the milk up in a pot on medium heat until it starts to bubble gently.
In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks for about a minute, until light yellow and increased in volume. Whisk in the cornstarch, vanilla extract, sweetener and gradually about ½ cup of the hot milk.
Slowly pour all of the egg yolk mixture into the scalding milk while stirring vigorously until the mixture seems completely dissolved. Keep warm and continuously stir until the custard thickens.
While letting the custard cool to room temperature, cream the butter. Whisk the creamed butter and cooled custard together.