Just Baking

It helps to have in your repertoire an all-purpose recipe for when you are in need of a dozen cupcakes or something you can decorate. For me, it’s this yellow cake recipe. I’ve used this recipe for my Halloween cupcakes, the heart from Valentine’s Day, and for my Easter Bunny cupcakes this past weekend. My girlfriend and I made up Easter baskets for our families and these cupcakes were a part of them. This yellow cake is a butter cake or creamed cake, so named because making the cake starts with creaming the butter and sugar. This adds air, increasing the volume and acts as the main leavener.

These cupcakes were decorated using marshmallow creme as the frosting. This worked well for holding the candy in place. A little dab on the bottom of the Peeps bunny held it in place. The grass was a candy grass I found among the bags of jelly beans and chocolate eggs. Made from potato starch and corn starch, the grass really didn’t have much flavor but worked as an alternative to green dyed coconut (I hate coconut). The “eggs” in this mini-Easter basket scene were malted milk robin eggs.

Yellow Cake
from page 352 of the The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook

Makes 12 cupcakes

12 Tbls. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups (12 1/4 oz) sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 large eggs plus 2 yolks
2 3/4 cups (11 1/2 oz) unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk, buttermilk, or yogurt (I used buttermilk)

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

In a large bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, salt, baking powder, and vanilla until the batter is fluffy. This should take at least five minutes. Also, make sure your butter and eggs are at room temperature. This is a requirement for making a butter cake.

Add the eggs and yolks one at a time. Beat thoroughly before adding the next. Then slowly fold in a third of the flour, then half of the milk, then another third of the flour, the remaining milk, and then the last of the flour. Only stir until mixed. Overmixing will reduce the volume of air trapped in the butter and sugar.

Pour into your greased or paper-lined cake pans or cupcake pans. Cooking times vary by shape but the cupcakes took about twenty-five to thirty minutes and rotate the pan 180° about twelve minutes in. Cool in the pan for about five minutes for cupcakes and ten minutes for a cake and place on a wire rack to cool completely.