Simple Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting!

Hello!! This is So Easy My Cat Could Bake It, my blog about my baking journey! I chose that name for my blog because Einstein, my cat, is my buddy! Right now I am experimenting with baking to see if it is something I want to continue to do after high school or just continue with it as a hobby.  Each week I will bake a recipe, then write about whether it passed the taste test, what I liked and didn't like, what I learned, and so on.

Out of the oven

So, lets give this a shot, shall we? For my first recipe I chose a simple vanilla cupcake with a vanilla butter cream frosting. Why? I am a beginner at baking, and I was looking at some baking blogs and they all recommended starting with something simple... Something that doesn't have a dozen ingredients. So I went and looked in my cupcake cookbook and there it was. The name of my cupcake cookbook is The Cupcake: 80 Cute and Colorful Cupcakes by Love Food from Parragon Books.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cupcake-Lifes-Better-With/dp/1445456125/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1379860880&sr=8-7&keywords=the+cupcake%3A+80+cute+and+colorful+cupcakes

Thoughts... It went really well, though I had a little hiccup with the frosting. When I added the milk it would not mix into the correct frosting consistency and that was because I was mixing it by hand. So I put it in the mixer and it got to that nice frosting consistency.

Einstein trying the frosting!

Nice fluffy frosting

The Taste Test - drum roll please! The frosting: Oh wow! It was awesome! This recipe made a lot of frosting, so I was afraid the amount I put on the cupcakes would make it way too sweet, but nope. It was nice and smooth and it was fluffy! The cupcake: It was also good, but it wasn't as light and airy as a cupcake should be, it was a bit more dense, more like a muffin, I guess. The cupcake wasn't as airy as the cake box variety nor as light as a bakery cupcake. So I think I will have to torment everyone by making another batch :-) FYI, the frosting recipe was also from the cupcake book.

Next time I will try mixing it in the mixer to see if that will help air get into the batter, thus making it fluffier. I will also maybe add baking powder. I did not put it in the mix because the recipe said not to if your flour was self-rising, I wasn't sure about the flour, so I did not put any in.  

Overall: On a scale from 1 (hated it) to 5 (loved it) this recipe was a 4 (liked it)

***Mom said the flour is not self-rising. She gets the all purpose variety because it is used in more recipes.... thus, it's more versatile.