Hooray for the Red White and Blue Cupcakes!

Happy Independence Day, Yo. (Pardon the slang. I’ve been catching up on my Breaking Bad.) We are having a few people over for the holiday, so I thought it might nice to make a red, white and blue dessert. I found this one on the boards and made a few modifications. The photo on Pinterest looks like this:

The original blogger used a boxed cake mix, which I thought about doing, but then  I decided to try my hand at some homemade cupcakes instead, using this simple white cake recipe from allrecipes.com.

INGREDIENTS:
 
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.

2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

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First, I beat the butter and eggs together. The recipe doesn’t call for the butter to be softened, but I put it in the microwave for ten seconds on 1/2 power to make it easier to work with.

 Next, I added the eggs one at a time, and then the vanilla. Having put aside the flour and baking soda, I then added that mixture and beat until everything was smooth and combined.

Then I added the milk, and after it was all mixed, I divided the batter into three parts. Two of those were then tinted with food coloring.

I put the batter into the muffin pan, using about a tablespoon of each color, one on top of the other.

And then I put them into the oven for 20 minutes. After about 15 minutes, I looked in and started to worry that I had over-filled the cups.

Which turned out to be the case. The final product was a mess. I should have known when the batter didn’t make it into all 12 cupcakes, but even then, it was too late.

Oh, well, at least it was from scratch, so I started again. This time, I used about a teaspoon of each color per cupcake.

This time, the cupcakes were perfectly baked after 20 minutes.

Next, I decided to try a Pinterest recipe for icing, even though, again, I played with it. The photo looks like this:

Ingredients

  • 2  cups  (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1  pound  confectioners’ sugar (about 3 3/4 cups), sifted
  • 1  teaspoon  pure vanilla extract
  • pinch kosher salt

Directions

  1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter on high until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Reduce mixer speed to low. Gradually add the sugar, then the vanilla and salt, and beat until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
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I used the basic ingredients for vanilla icing, cutting them in half though. Next, I added about 1/2 cup of heavy cream to make vanilla butter cream icing.

Then I used my handy-dandy icing press.

And piped icing onto each cupcake.

Using some red and blue sprinkles…

…and a decoration from Michaels, the cupcakes turned out really cute.

Overall, they are tasty, but they could be a little more moist. I think next time, I may try adding a little more milk (maybe another 1/2 cup) and a little more vanilla to the cake recipe.

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Category : Baking, cooking, Food, Homemade, Kids, Pinterest, Recipes, seasonal
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