Magnolia’s Vanilla Cupcakes

Ever since middle school, my best friend (Amy) and I decided that we’d open up our own bakery one day. Then this year we decided we’d go to pastry school sometime in the near future. Today, we put our skills to the test by making Magnolia Cupcakes. Amy made these a couple of days ago for her family but since I had never even made cupcakes from scratch, we spent the afternoon whisking away.

Magnolia’s is the famous bakery on Bleeker St. in New York City. I was a bit disappointed the first time I went because I felt the cupcake itself was dry and the buttercream frosting too sweet. Nevertheless, I always looked forward to free Magnolia’s. Afterall, a cupcake is still a cupcake- it’ll taste good no matter what (or so I hope).

The following recipe is the standard Magnolia recipe (from recipelink.com) for their Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. It makes around 2 dozen cupcakes.

Cupcake Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Prepare the muffin tins with cupcake liners.
3. Combine the self-rising flour and all-purpose flour and sift into one bowl.
4. In another large bowl, cream the two sticks of butter until it appears smooth. Then add the sifted sugar, little by little until the mixture becomes fluffy. It should take about 3 minutes using an electric mixer.
5. Add each egg, one at a time.
6. Add the dry ingredients a bit at a time.
7. Add the milk and vanilla.
8. Scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure all the batter is well incorporated and continue mixing. Don’t overbeat.
9. At this point, the batter should not be runny at all; it should be thick and dense, but not to the point that it forms a dough. Taking a spoon, scoop a good portion into the cupcake liners, filling it 3/4 of the way.
10. Bake for around 20 minutes, until golden brown.

*Side Notes (from Amy):

• Different versions of this recipe call for different orders of adding in the ingredients. Today, we actually added the self-rising flour after adding the eggs and milk. The cupcakes turned out perfectly fine.
• Sifting the flour and the sugar make the cupcakes more fluffy.
• When putting the trays into the oven, always put the trays on the top rack. Putting the trays on the bottom or middle rack will expose the batter to direct heat, causing the outside of the cupcake to bake more quickly and burn.
• We used non-fat milk instead of whole milk, but the cupcakes turned out great. This might be because we used so much butter that the 4% in fat content didn’t make much of a difference.

Frosting Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 6 to 8 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Frosting Recipe:

1. Like with the cupcake recipe, cream the butter in a large bowl using an electric mixer.
2. Gradually add in the confectioners’ sugar, 1 cup at a time. Stop at 4 cups. Make sure you sift the sugar before you add it in.
3. Add the milk and vanilla. Continue mixing.
4. Continue adding the rest of the confectioners’ sugar. You may not need to use all 8 cups; it depends on the consistency of the frosty and what you want.
5. Add food coloring if your want to make different colors!

*Side Notes:

• Even though our buttercream frosting came out tasty and sweet, it didn’t look like the usual Magnolia frosting. This might be because we used non-fat milk. It seemed as if the butter separated and formed white specks (it still looked appetizing!).
• We only used around 5 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar, giving us less of a fluffy frosting. If you’d like to use less sugar, use less milk.
• We found it best to chill the frosting so that it keeps its form when frosted.
• Make sure the cupcakes have cooled for at least 15 minutes so that the frosting doesn’t melt (we were too impatient, so we only waited for 5).

These cupcakes are guaranteed to turn heads and make for a perfect treat for anyone!