Tag Archives: buttercream

valentine’s day cupcakes

Make everyone break their New Year’s resolution diets by bringing these everywhere you go.

valentine's day cupcakes

These cupcakes were the best cupcakes I’ve ever had. And I had two other people tell me that too! So, it must be true. I’ve never been great at making cupcakes. In fact, I sort of hate it. But these were real winners.

YELLOW CUPCAKE RECIPE
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
Yields: appx. 38
Prep: 10 minutes.
Bake time: 16 min per dozen or 48 minutes total

Ingredients:
2 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cup whole-wheat all purpose flour*
1/4 cup corn starch
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 sticks butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
4 eggs, room temperature
2 cups buttermilk

Do it!
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake liners in cupcake pan.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until the batter is fluffy, light, and no longer gritty.
- Mix in the vanilla and beat in the eggs one at a time on medium speed.
- Mix in the buttermilk at a low speed. The mixture will look a bit curdled.
- Slowly mix in the flour mixture in parts, until everything in well combined.
- Pour the mixture into the cupcake cups. I filled them 1/2 full. These really rise. When in doubt, do a test cupcake first.
- Bake for 16 minutes.

*The original recipe called for four cups of cake flour. I only had two. I used this substitution. The cornstarch gave the whole thing a very slight cornbread taste, which made them taste amazing, especially since the frosting was so sweet.

valentines day cupcakes

 

BEST BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

Ingredients
2 cups vegetable shortening
8 cups confectioners sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp clear imitation butter flavor
6 cups heavy whipping cream

Do it!
- In a large bowl, cream shortening until fluffy. Fiercely beat in the confectioners sugar about one cup at a time until it’s fluffy. Then add salt and the butter flavor.
-Beat in the whipping cream in parts. You’ll know the frosting is done when it’s light and forming slight peaks.

This was a perfect amount of frosting vs. cupcake ratio (minus the cup my boyfriend probably ate while I was making it.) I dyed the frosting with Wilton’s food coloring gels. They’re the best.

valentines day cupcakes

I used these frosting tutorials.

Frosting Cupcakes
Four Cupcake Frosting Techniques

And just for fun, I thought these Valentine’s rose cupcakes were beautiful.

strawberry pink champagne cupcake recipe

How decadent. I made these for a New Year’s party. I was really frustrated that I couldn’t find a recipe online (most of them were made with boxed cake mix), so I sort of just made this up. They turned out pretty good.

Prep & Cook time: approximately 40 min.
Yields: 24 mini cupcakes or 12 regular cupcakes

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup butter
3 egg whites
1 whole egg
3/4 cup whole strawberries
3/4 cup pink champagne

How-to:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Puree strawberries in a blender or food processor. You should have about 1/3 cup of puree.
- In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- In large bowl, combine sugar and butter. Mix until fluffy, about 4 minutes.
- Add the egg whites one by one into sugar mixture, then add the whole egg. Beat until creamy.
- Fold in the strawberry puree until well combined.
- Slowly add in all of the flour mixture.
-Finally, mix in the champagne and mix until smooth.


My mixture was certainly very pink.
- Fill cupcake pan with 1/2 of the batter in each slot. These things do rise.


I made mini cupcakes.

- Bake for 15 minutes. If you make regular sized cupcakes, you might need to add an additional 5 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool before frosting.

I used this buttercream frosting recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It’s the best out there.

Enjoy your cupcakes!

[edit] here’s a .pdf download via my instructables account.