As some of you may know, baking for me is very therapeutic. For some odd reason it calms me down and distracts my mind from whatever is going on to more enjoyable things like butter, sugar, sprinkles and brightly colored gel dyes. I was really wanting a job at Make A Wish as a development assistant and I didn't even get an interview which was severely disappointing. So I decided to bake my sorrows away. I decided to document all the steps to my yummy funfetti cupcakes I decided to make tonight. Everyone always seems surprised by what I make but honestly I don't think what I'm doing it that fancy. There are very few secrets to what I do because lets be honest, all I'm doing is following a recipe. I am a huge advocate for avoiding cake mixes at all cost because I think they are way to sweet and its like using training wheels on your bike when you are 15...time to grow up and graduate to the two wheels. :) So I have pictures to show all the steps I used to making these cupcakes to show that its really super easy! So without further ado....
Funfetti Cupcakes (Recipe Follows)
· 3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
· 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
· 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
· 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
· 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
· 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
· 2 1/4 cups sugar
· 5 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks, room temperature
· 2 cups buttermilk, room temperature
· 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium. Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add yolks, and beat until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each. Beat in vanilla.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.
I tried to find a cake recipe that I could make with stuff I already had at home. I really wanted to make a Lemon Blackberry cupcake but since I had neither lemons nor blackberries nor the will to run to the grocery store at 9:30 pm...I decided to rock out the Funfetti. The recipe calls for buttermilk, unfortunately though, I had none. So I had to improvise. Luckily there is a simple trick that can take regular milk and make it function like buttermilk in a recipe like this. All you have to do is add a tablespoon of vinegar for each cup of milk. Just add the vinegar and let it sit for 5 minutes...voila...make shift buttermilk!
So while my buttermilk was sitting I starting sifting all the dry ingredients together including the cake flour, regular flour, baking powder and soda as well as salt.
Awwww....looks so nice! While this was going on I had my butter creaming in the my favorite kitchen power tool, my kitchenaide. It's important to make sure your sugar and butter are well incorporated and light and fluffy.
The recipe calls for 5 whole eggs and 3 extra yolks. This means I had to separate the remaining three eggs. I think its fairly easy to separate eggs but it comes with practice. I kept the whites and yolks separate and ended up freezing the extra whites for me to use sometime down the road. So after I have all the eggs in, I was ready for the next step!
It's now time to add both the dry mixture as well as the buttermilk. Always start with dry ingredients as well as end with them. This recipe calls for three installments of the dry mixture and two of the buttermilk.
Next comes vanilla which is the only thing that I don't measure exactly. Cake batter just isn't the same without at least some vanilla! After the vanilla comes the very best part. SPRINKLES! I used a good amount of rainbow sprinkles to make sure there are lots of sprinkles in every cupcake. I don't think there is such a thing as too many sprinkles in a funfetti batter. You be the judge.
After the batter is mixed we move on to putting them in the cupcake tin. I used some really cute cupcake liners that were pink with white polka dots...adorable!
In order to make sure I have even distribution I like to use a scoop to get just the right amount of batter in the liner. No one likes cupcakes that are too small or that are grossly falling over the top. This scoop makes them just right! I loooove my scoop.
Aaaaaannnnnddddddd.....into the oven the go! About 18-20 minutes later they come of of that 350* oven looking divine and might I say...just right?
After letting the cupcakes cool completely, after I got through baking all 41 of them, it was time to make some frosting. I made a super simple frosting with butter, vanilla, powdered sugar and milk. I wanted to do something fun with the frosting so I split the frosting into 5 different bowls and added some gel food coloring to each bowl...
After I mixed them up they turned out great and very brightly colored...
I decided to add ALL the frosting colors to one giant piping bag and see what came out. I used an 18 inch piping bag to make sure all the frosting would fit.
The easiest way to fill the bag is to fold it over slightly and place it in a cup to hold the bag upright while I alternated adding colors into the bag with a spatula. The end result looked very colorful from the top.
I started piping onto the cupcakes, the first ones were very pink and orange but as I kept piping the color continued to change. Half way through I did a dozen of the cupcakes with a different tip...The last cupcakes were really cool because they looked the most like a color wheel. I think they are fun. I was a little short on frosting because the batter made 9 more cupcakes than I anticipated so some of the cupcakes didn't end up with as much frosting. Overall they turned out okay! The therapy paid off as I feel more relaxed. However, I have 41 cupcakes to get rid of now!!!
I'm open for suggestions for future projects. I just need people to eat all these cupcakes I make! One girl does not need 41 cupcakes especially when I'll be surprised if I even eat one! They are good I promise, I just rarely eat what I bake. So if you are a willing guinea pig...please let me know!
