Vanilla Cupcakes

This is the vanilla cupcake recipe that you've been waiting for!

These delicious scratch Vanilla Cupcakes are so moist, light and fluffy.

Much like our popular Vanilla Buttermilk Cake recipe, these homemade vanilla cupcakes are contain buttermilk, and are so light and moist.

Ingredients Needed for Vanilla Cupcakes

• Sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture to the cupcakes
• Unsalted Butter: We prefer unsalted so that we have more control of the amount of salt that we are adding to the recipe. The softened butter is ready when it "dents" when pressed, but it shouldn't be overly soft.
• Vanilla Extract for flavor
• Eggs: We use room temperature eggs in our cakes. If you are in a hurry, sit them in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes or so.
• Buttermilk Its acidity makes for a softer, more tender cake as it softens the strands of gluten. We recommend "full fat" buttermilk.
• Vegetable Oil: We prefer canola oil
• Salt to enhance flavors and cut the sweetness a bit
• Baking Soda and Baking Powder for leavening
• Cake Flour: We prefer cake flour for this recipe as it has a lower protein content which results in softer, more tender cupcakes.

How to Make Vanilla Cupcakes from Scratch

You can find the full, printable Vanilla Cupcake Recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our process!

*These cupcakes are based on our popular Vanilla Buttermilk Cake. We adjusted to add just a bit more oil to this cupcake version of the recipe. Enjoy!!

• First, Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Add cupcake liners to the cupcake pan(s).

• Dry Ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside.

• Buttermilk Mixture: In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Set aside.

• In the bowl of your mixer, add the softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.

• Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yolk is blended.

• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid). After the last addition, mix just until combined. Be careful not to over-mix.
• Add the batter to the cupcake liners (approximately ¼ cup in each liner)

• Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just few crumbs attached. Remove the cupcakes immediately from the pan to prevent overbaking.

• Makes 32 cupcakes (approximately 7 ½ cups of batter)

What Frostings go with Vanilla Cupcakes?

I cannot think of a frosting that wouldn't be great with this recipe! Today, we used a simple and delicious vanilla buttercream.

Decorating the Vanilla Cupcakes

You can decorate these cupcakes however you like! We made ours a little fancy with piped buttercream ruffles and roses.

We decorated our cupcakes with two types of ruffles. One style uses a 104 piping tip. Simply pipe slightly overlapping rows of ruffles as you move across the cupcake. (We discuss this style in our Cupcake Basics Video!)

Ruffles with 070 Piping Tip

The other style of piping that we did was using an 070 piping tip! Hold the piping tip so that the opening is almost parallel to the surface of the cupcake. Then, rotate the cupcake slowly as you pipe.

So pretty!

How to Make a Buttercream Ribbon Rose

We topped our cupcakes with ribbon roses! We have a tutorial on buttercream ribbon roses.

This technique involves piping a ribbon rose (on a square of wax paper) using a tip 104 while rotating on a rose nail.

Place the finished roses onto a cookie sheet and freeze for about 10-15 minutes until firm. Then place on the cupcakes!

Here is one of our finished cupcakes! The leaves are piped with a 352 tip.

...and here is our full platter!

FAQs

More Cupcake Recipes!

If you are a fan of cupcakes (who isn't?!), don't miss these other great recipes! You can find them all here in our Cupcake Recipes section.

Some of our most popular are Banana Pudding Cupcakes, Lemon Cupcakes, caramel cupcakes, and scratch chocolate cupcakes.

If you are interested in cupcake decorating, check out our post on Cupcake Decorating Basics, as well as our Cupcake Tutorials section. We have hundreds of cake decorating tutorials to share!

Vanilla Cupcakes

BY Melissa and Bebe

These moist and light vanilla cupcakes taste amazing with any filling or frosting. This is a wonderful go-to recipe!

Prep Time: 15 minutes mins

Cook Time: 15 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 32

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Ingredients

• ▢ 1 ½ sticks (170g) unsalted butter, softened (holds it shape but dents when pressed)
• ▢ 2 cups (400g) sugar
• ▢ 4 large eggs
• ▢ 3 cups (342g) cake flour (spooned into measuring cup and leveled off) If you do not have cake flour see substitution in Notes below.
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (8g) baking powder
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
• ▢ 1 ¼ cups (296g) buttermilk — if you do not have buttermilk, see substitution below
• ▢ ⅓ cup (68g) vegetable oil
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon (12g) vanilla extract

Vanilla Buttercream

• ▢ 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened it should be softened to the point that it dents when pressed, but should still hold shape
• ▢ 6 cups (690g) confectioners' sugar
• ▢ 2 tsp. (8g) vanilla extract
• ▢ ⅓ cup (72g) milk or cream, more if needed
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt 3g (optional)

Instructions

Vanilla Cupcakes

• First, Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Add cupcake liners to the cupcake pan(s).
• Dry Ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside.
• Buttermilk Mixture: In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Set aside.
• In the bowl of your mixer, add the softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
• Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yolk is blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid). After the last addition, mix just until combined. Be careful not to over-mix.
• This recipe makes 30-32 cupcakes. Scoop about ¼ cup batter into each cupcake liner.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just few crumbs attached. Remove the cupcakes immediately from the pan to prevent overbaking.
• This recipe makes about 7 ½ cups of batter (enough for 30-32 cupcakes)

For the Vanilla Buttercream

• Mix the softened butter on medium speed until smooth. Blend in the vanilla extract.
• Add half of the confectioners' sugar and most of the milk or cream. Mix at medium speed until the confectioners' sugar is incorporated.
• Add remaining confectioners' sugar and milk and mix at medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally. The, we like to slow down the mixer to very slow (#2 on the Kitchenaid) for 1 to 2 minutes. This will help eliminate air pockets in the buttercream. The texture will become very smooth.
• This recipe can be doubled or halved.

Decoration

• Decorate the cupcakes however you like! We used a 104 ruffle tip for the cupcakes that have rows of ruffles & for the ribbon roses, a 070 tip for the ruffles that are circular, and for the smooth swirls, just a piping bag with the tip snipped away.

Notes

Substitute for Buttermilk: No Buttermilk? Here is a substitution: To a measuring cup, add 1 Tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice. Add milk to the 1 ¼ mark, stir. Wait 5 minutes and it is ready to use. The mixture will thicken.

Substitution for Cake Flour: Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour: For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK).

This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend

Recipe makes 7 ½ cups batter

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