Sometimes you just want a good, quick vanilla cupcake.
Welcome to this week’s installment of BwB Sunday Sessions! Since our science-y lesson this week was about bowls, I wanted to showcase a basic, all-in-one cupcake that new bakers could use to help build their kitchen confidence!
I…was also short on time. #MomLife
The recipe that I used is the Moist Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from one of my favorite baking blogs, Life Love and Sugar. This recipe comes together incredibly quickly and feeds a crowd (it yields 24-26 cupcakes). I highly recommend it for anyone learning to bake. It’s a true confidence builder!
In this post:
The Prep
Before I even started pulling ingredients, I set my oven for 350° and made sure that my oven thermometer was nice and cozy on the baking rack. Turning on my oven first meant that I wouldn’t have to wait for my oven to heat once my cupcakes were ready to bake. I also lined a cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
Onto the ingredients!
The ingredients in this recipe are really easy, and are probably something that you have at home. As usual, I always recommend prepping your ingredients beforehand. That way, you’ll be ready to add ingredients at the appropriate time:
The good news is that a well-stocked savory kitchen will have most, if not all of these ingredients.
The Technique
This batter uses an all-in-one technique, which simply means that the wet ingredients and dry ingredients are mixed together.
No mixer needed.
While you can use your mixer (and the original recipe actually calls for you to use your mixer), for those of you without a mixer, you can confidently make this recipe without one, and nobody will ever know the difference.
For those of you with a mixer who are just feeling plumb lazy that day, this technique works too.
As you can see in the photo above, the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar are already together in one large bowl. I just gave them a quick stir with my whisk to combine them and set them aside.
Next, I simply put the egg, oil, milk and vanilla (the water comes later) in a medium bowl and mixed with a whisk until all four were fully combined.
Once the wet ingredients and dry ingredients were separately combined, I added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mixed until smooth. My whisk did a great job with this.
Finally, I added the water in three different pours, combining the water completely between each addition. The batter was very watery when I finished, but that’s how it’s supposed to be!
Seriously. This recipe rocks.
The Bake
Before I put the batter into the cupcake liners, I checked my oven again to make sure that the temperature was correct. Once that’s done, I got busy filling cupcake liners! I filled them to about the halfway mark, trying to stay as consistent as possible so that they would bake evenly.
These cupcakes baked for about 22 minutes in a 350° oven. I removed the cupcakes from the oven and let them cool on a cooling rack for five minutes, then removed the cupcakes from the cupcake pan and put them directly onto the cooling rack to cool completely.
I made my tried and true vanilla buttercream and went crazy with sprinkles, but you can frost the cupcakes with buttercream or your favorite whipped cream topping. The sky is the limit for this great cupcake!
The Finish
These cupcakes come together in two bowls. One with wet ingredients and one with dry ingredients. This is the cupcake I make when my kids need cupcakes for a school event and they tell me the morning of the event. This recipe makes plenty of cupcakes and they can be done in an hour.
But I should really talk to my kids about telling me about stuff at the last minute…
Anyway, here they are!
I hope you enjoyed this Sunday Session! If you loved reading this as much as I loved writing it, be sure to subscribe so that you can get the weekly update so that you can be the first to know everything BwB!
Until next time!