When I was young, the thing that I most looked forward to having after school was the mini cupcakes that my Uncle and Auntie would buy for me from a small snack shop nearby. Those bite-sized cupcakes are soft with a buttery, vanilla flavour. These classic vanilla cupcakes have the right texture and taste that I’m looking for! And I’m so excited to share my proven recipe with you all.
This recipe gives 15-18 cupcakes. Bake these fluffy vanilla cupcakes to share the love and joy with your family and friends!
Table of contents
Ingredients for classic vanilla cupcakes
- Plain flour: Using plain or all-purpose flour for this recipe gives the perfect soft and fluffy texture.
- Baking soda: A leavening agent that requires acidic ingredient and liquid to activate its function.
- Baking powder: A complete leavening agent that contains both the acid and base required for a product to rise. This recipe requires the combination of both baking soda and baking powder to create the perfect leavening effect to generate a light and fluffy texture.
- Salt: Salt enhances the flavour of these cupcakes!
- Sugar: The main ingredient that gives the sweetness of cupcakes while making them soft and moist
- Unsalted butter: Adds a rich buttery flavour and a tender texture to the cupcakes. Make sure it’s proper room temperature.
- Eggs: They enable structure and stability within the batter, and also helps with creating moisture in baked goods.
- Milk: It provides moisture and tenderness to the texture, and create a softer crumb in the cupcakes.
- Vanilla extract: The rich vanilla flavour comes from this key ingredient!
How to make classic vanilla cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Prepare the dry ingredients: mix in plain flour, baking soda and baking powder in a large bowl, then set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This is the key step to making fluffy cupcakes.
- Beat in eggs one at a time.
- Sift in half of the flour mixture and combine. Add in half of the milk then mix well.
- Repeat step 5, add in salt and vanilla extract, then fold to combine the ingredients.
- Pour or scoop the batter into a lined muffin pan.
- Bake in the oven at 180ºC for 20-25 mins.
Success tips for making perfectly fluffy cupcakes
Use unsalted butter at room temperature.
Make sure the butter is softened at room temperature. If the butter is too hot, the cupcakes will fail to rise and end up being flat and greasy. If the butter is too cold, it won’t be able to fully blend with the sugar.
Don’t overmix the ingredients.
While we have the ingredients to help with raising the cupcakes in the baking process, how you beat and mix the ingredients also plays an important role in giving a fluffy texture. Overmixing the ingredients will yield dense, tough or deflated baked goods. Always mix at a low to medium speed to avoid overmixing the ingredients, stopping just as the ingredients blend.
Why did my cupcakes have a dense texture?
If your cupcakes turn out to have a dense texture, it’s most likely because you haven’t creamed the butter and sugar properly. This is the most important step to making the baked cupcakes light and fluffy. Be patient with this step – you need to cream the butter and sugar to incorporate enough air into the mixture, yielding an airy texture. To cream them perfectly, make sure the butter is softened at room temperature. Then use a hand-mixer or stand mixer to beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale yellow, light and fluffy.
Why do we need both baking soda and baking powder?
The key to making soft and moist cupcakes is to create air bubbles in the batter that expand in the oven. Baking soda reacts with acid and liquid to generate the leavening effect, while baking powder itself contains the sodium carbonate and acid that react with the heat in the oven to create the air bubbles, giving the light and airy texture in baked goods. Hence, with the combination of both ingredients, this gives the best leavening effect for this cupcake recipe.
Can I use salted butter instead?
Yes, you can use salted butter to make these vanilla cupcakes. Simply remove salt from the ingredient list when making the cupcakes. Having too much salt will overpower the sweetness of the cupcakes, generating an unpleasant taste. However, I’d recommend using unsalted butter so that you can adjust the amount of salt in the recipe according to your dietary preferences.
These fluffy and moist vanilla cupcakes burst with a delicious buttery goodness. They are a perfect sweet treat that reboots your energy on a busy day, so give this recipe a try and see for yourself how amazing they are!
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Classic Vanilla Cupcakes
Equipment
- 1 Hand mixer
- 2 Mixer bowls
- 1 Spatula
- 15 Silicone cupcake moulds
Ingredients
- 190 g plain flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 130 g sugar
- 125 g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 185 ml milk
- 1½ tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- In a large mixer bowl, add in plain flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Give it a mix and set aside.
- In another mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in the eggs by beating 1 egg at a time.
- Sift in half of the flour mixture, then mix the ingredients until combined.
- Add in half amount of milk. Mix well.
- Add in the remaining flour mixture and milk. Use a spatula to fold the ingredients until combined.
- Add in vanilla extract and gently fold to combine all ingredients.
- Transfer the batter into a measuring cup then pour into cupcake moulds. Alternatively, you can use a spoon to scoop the batter into cupcake moulds. Fill the cupcake moulds until 70-80% full to allow space for the batter to rise in the oven.
- Use a spoon to smooth the top of the cupcake batter.
- Bake in the oven at 180°C for 20-25 minutes.