Vanilla cupcakes

When I started experimenting with cakes, it was always a simple chocolate cake I would try out; as I only had that recipe in my microwave recipe booklet. I came across some silicone muffin cupcake moulds at a nearby store and bought them to try out cupcakes with the same recipe. The cupcakes always turned out great, but the first few round cakes I tried were a disaster, and that's another story. So I proudly made chocolate cupcakes and gave them to my grandmother who was visiting. She took one bite of this and immediately remarked "Yennamma intha cake karuppa irukku. Kasakkuthu vera". (What is this dear, these cakes are black in colour and they taste a little bitter?). I was so disappointed :(. So I immediately tried out vanilla cupcakes with the same recipe omitting the Cocoa powder make some normal butter cream frosting to spread on the cupcake. Needless to say, these bright cream coloured sweet cakes, won her over :)

Here is the recipe:
Flour - 2 cups
Baking Powder - 2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Butter - 1/2 cup (room temp, unsalted)
Sugar - 1 1/4 cup
Eggs - 2 (room temp)
Milk - 1 cup (room temp)
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line/grease muffin pans. I use silicone cupcake moulds and hence I skip this step.

Sift Flour, baking powder and salt, 3 times. Keep aside.
Cream butter and sugar well.
Add Vanilla essence mix well.
Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.

Mix the flour mix and milk to the butter-sugar-egg mix in three additions, starting and ending with the flour.
Fill each cup 3/4th with the batter and bake for 20 minutes. I took them out in just 18 minutes.
Remove and let cool on wire rack for 10 minutes. Invert and remove the muffin pans and cool completely.

This makes 18 muffins (standard size), but some of my muffin cups are large and hence I could make 14 muffins.

I frosted these with Chocolate fudge. This is the first time I tried frosting a cake. I had recently purchased the icing bag and nozzles from IBCA and I was thrilled to try it out.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting:
120 g unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract.

Melt the chocolate in a saucepan. Alternately you could place it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. In another bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and beat well until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract. Add chocolate and beat until the frosting is smooth and glossy.

Pipe any design you wish on the cupcakes. I was only trying out the various nozzles this time and the frosting was quite ridiculous to look at. I sprinked some coloured sugar balls too.