Yellow Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I have a confession to make. I don’t love chocolate cake. I was always the weird one kid wanted a white or yellow cake for my birthday with vanilla frosting. To me, if a bakery can do a good white or yellow cake, then they know what they’re doing. When I set out to make cupcakes for Hubby’s 30th birthday party, I decided to make these yellow cupcakes. The original plan was to put chocolate frosting on the yellow cupcakes and vanilla buttercream on the chocolate cupcakes.

Well, time slipped away from me and I ended up just making one kind of frosting, which worked out just fine. For the party, I frosted the cupcakes with my go-to Swiss meringue buttercream and filled them with dulce-de-leche. I didn’t have a chance to snap photos of the cupcakes before the party, so I just had to make them again (twist my arm!) This time I didn’t fill them, just left them as they were in all their simple beauty.

I referred to Bridget’s Yellow Cake Comparison to find this recipe. She mentioned that this Martha Stewart recipe had the best texture but was a little bland. But I knew she was tasting the cake plain. When you add frosting and maybe a filling, the cupcake becomes more of a device to deliver the good stuff than anything else. So to me, the texture was king in my selection of this recipe. Since first trying it, I’ve made it a couple times now. It provides consistently tasty results without too much of a fuss. It’s going to be my go-to recipe from here on out.

Yellow Cupcakes

Yield: 24

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place 24 cupcake liners in two muffin pans. Into a medium bowl, sift together flours, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk and beginning and ending with the flour; beat until combined after each addition.

Divide batter between the prepared pans. Bake, rotating the pans halfway through, until cakes are golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Allow cupcakes to cool in pan for 10 minutes. Then place them on cooling racks until they are completely cooled.

Recipe from Martha Stewart, as seen on The Way the Cookie Crumbles