Fresh out of the Oven!

What better to do than bake when your up at 2am and can’t seem to sleep!? I was determined to make a successful vanilla cupcake with vanilla butter-cream icing. Being a classic flavor, you’d think it would be a simple task. However, for some reason butter-cream has given me plenty of trouble. I always ended up with a pure butter taste! After doing some research online I realized a few of my mistakes. 1) NEVER soften your butter with the microwave or any other way, let it sit and soften on its own!! 2) You really can make butter-cream with basic ingredients you have at home, no need to run to the store for anything fancy. 3) Don’t rush the process, slowly mix your ingredients in the correct order and let them mix for a while.

The first thing I thought of when I realized I had mastered the butter-cream was to share it with you! so here goes my late night baking adventure 🙂

The Big Book of Cupcakes by Betty Crocker gave me the perfect recipes to use! The book has the basics like vanilla and chocolate cakes as well as icings right in the first few pages! It’s a perfect go-to when your in need of tips on recipes and icing methods. I used the yellow cake recipe and vanilla butter-cream recipe for my late night baking adventures!

Time to fill the baking cups! I was thrilled with the way the batter came out, it was so light and fluffy! While I think box mixes can be absolutely amazing, I must say I love the thickness of home-made better. With that said, definitely don’t think box mixes make your baking any less amazing! I used box mixes all the time until I was comfortable making my own batter from scratch. From time to time I still grab a box mix and add in some of my own ingredients to personalize it! The spice cake mix has to be my favorite! It works for everything, add some fresh apples into the batter and its even more amazing!

Back to my vanilla butter-cream cupcakes! Bake Baby Bake!!! One of my favorite parts of baking is watching the batter rise into cute little cakes. Ah, and the amazing vanilla smell that fills my kitchen! Here’s a tip as far as baking time goes…don’t set a timer! It’s not a life changing tip, but honestly it made me feel more confident in my baking. Instead of watching the timer count down, I was looking at my cupcakes. I would check the color to see how they looked as they were baking, I would check them with toothpicks, and look at the texture. Some times the little things can make the biggest difference. After all my time of watching cupcakes bake it’s just natural now to know when they are ready to be pulled out of the oven. So give yourself a little boost in the confidence department and get rid of that timer 🙂 Just don’t forget they are in the oven! haha!

Hooray! They are done and ready to be eaten! I was so very proud of the texture and flavor of the cake, and even more so of the icing! I was nervous at first because the icing seemed to have a strange texture at first, but a little more mixing and it was good to go! Have you ever watched the process of mixing your icing? One minute its lumpy butter and sugar and then poof! All of a sudden it’s a creamy fluffy mixture. It amazes me every time.

I hope this post has given you a few helpful hints and some motivation to believe in your baking! I have so many photos from previous cupcakes and recipes I have used to be on the lookout for some more ideas in the near future! If you have any unique baking ideas please comment and share them with me! 🙂

Until next time! – I’m off to grab a cupcake 😉