Cupcakes and Frosting
Shannon went through a brief phase where she wanted to start a specialty cupcake catering business. I say a brief phase, even though I know it’s still in the backburner of her mind, because she has yet to actually make or decorate a cupcake and the idea dawned on her almost a year ago. I bought her “Hello, Cupcake!” for Christmas and she loved it, but we just never got around to making anything from it. The reason is a combination of me having a next to zero tolerance for sweets and mostly being unwilling to buy a muffin tin in large part because of that.
I’ve had the cupcake cups in the cupboard for seemingly years now and recently stumbled upon them again. That’s not really the nicest story, as I had to do a rigorous cleaning, sanitizing and recompartmentalizing job as our pantry became infested with Indian meal moths, but hey, it wasn’t all bad, because now I’m making cupcakes. Of course I wouldn’t use that as a sales pitch to anyone, “I just cleaned out my cupboard because of a moth infestation – sample?”
For someone that doesn’t particularly care for cupcakes, I found these surprisingly edible. For the icing, I used up some leftover creme fraiche (which I’ve started keeping on hand as more or less a staple for scrambled eggs or what have you) and crumbled some granola on top because it seemed like it needed a finishing touch. Nothing particularly artsy, but nice enough, I think. No complaints anyway.
- 1 stick (125g) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2/3 cup (125g) sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup (90g) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons (7g) baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream
- 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- icing sugar to taste
- 2 tablespoons whole milk
- 1/4 cup granola
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the oven rack positioned in the center. Fill a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.
- Cream together the butter and sugar. Then, add the eggs, one at a time, then the milk and vanilla, whisking until smooth.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and mix into the wet ingredients.
- Divide the mixture evenly into the cupcake liners and bake until lightly browned, about 15-20 minutes.
- While the cupcakes are cooling, whip together the butter, creme fraiche and vanilla with enough icing sugar to make it taste sweetened. Adjust the consistency with the milk, if necessary. Spread on the cupcakes and sprinkle with crumbled granola.