Story of the cupcake…The reason why I’ve given up buying cupcakes and am baking them myself…

Mom, “Are you done already?”
Kid 1, “Yup”. Licking his cream-coated fingers.
Mom, “And are you done too?” looking at Kid 2.
“Yup” replied Kid 2 a bit more apologetically.
“You mean you made me buy cupcakes just so you can eat the topping? the cream? the frosting? And that’s all?”
“But mommy, the cake tastes awful! See I took a bite here.”
Mom exasperated, takes a bite to check if the kids were telling the truth. “Ok…awful! Go wash your hands and let me clean this up”.

After the above scene repeated itself a few times, the kids have been bugging me to bake them a cupcake and I was more than willing. But for the life of me, I’ve never baked a cupcake. So I had to look for a recipe I was confident of trying and something that the kids will like. I even had to get some cupcake bakeware. When I was all set, I aproned myself and got to work. And for the first time, I saw nothing left on their plates! Thanks to this site. 

Ingredients: (makes 12 cupcakes)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line muffin pans with paper cups.
2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt with a whisk. Set aside.
3. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time. Beating well after each addition.
5. Add the vanilla extract. Beat to mix well.
6. With the beater at low speed, add 1/3 of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the milk.
7. Repeat the above step a second time - use up all th e milk in this step. Continue beating.
8. Add the last 1/3 of the flour. Beat.
9. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat a little bit more to make sure everything is mixed well.
10. Fill the paper cups (which should be in the muffin pans) with about 1 1/2 tbsp of the batter. This will give almost half filled cups.
11. Bake for about 20 minutes or until light brown or if a toothpick inserted in the centre comes our clean.
12. Serve with ice cream of choice.

Tips:

To store the cupcakes

1. Let the cakes cool completely.
2. Put them in a ziplock bag. Try to remove as much air from the bag before zipping it.
3. Then place it in the freezer.
4. Before eating you can either leave it out until it loses its cold, or reheat the cake at 250F for abt 5-10min.