Celebration Cupcakes!

Little Ms. and Big Mr. are VERY excited to officially announce to everyone that we are soon to be proud auntie and uncle to a beautiful baby girl! YEA! We could not be more pleased, especially Big Mr. who seems to throw his normal fiscal restraint to the wind with the simple refrain "Its for my niece!".
(I know that was a lot of exclamation points for one paragraph, but we really are very excited.)
So, in honour of the proud Mama-to-be's baby shower, I made celebration cupcakes. Generally when I bake, I try to sneak in covertly healthy ingredients, or, at a minmum, scale back on the sugar. But really, there is a time and a place for everything and Celebration Cupcakes are neither the time nor the place to count calories or substitute whole wheat flour. These are whole-hog, go for the glory, moist, decadent and delicious cupcakes thanks to one simple (and sinful) ingredient: B-U-T-T-E-R. You can taste butter in every bite of these cakes and its totally worth every calorie and each minute on the treadmill.
Based on a classic butter cake recipe, these cupcakes are a Little Ms. mix-up of two similar recipes, one from Canada's classic, tried and Tested Till Perfect Canadian Living and the other from another Canadian food icon, Mark McEwan. I found McEwan's recipe in my copy of his book, Great Food at Home, which, for the most part, I found to be as pretentious as McEwan himself appears to be from his various TV shows, but for the life of me, I could not find the recipe online. I ultimately followed McEwan's recipe for Vanilla-cardamom Cupcakes pretty closely, omitting the cardamom...like I said, there's a time and a place (and, while there may be room for cardamom cupcakes in Yorkville, there's definitely no room for cardamom at a baby shower!)
This recipe made a TON of cupcakes! I always use a spring loaded ice cream scoop to fill my cupcake liners, and I like to ensure that the paper liners are not over-filled, so that there is plenty of room for icing and the cupcakes release easily from the pan.Using a 3 ounce scoop for the regular size cupcakes and a 1/2 ounce scoop for the mini-cakes, I was able to make 24 big and 36 mini-cupcakes from just one recipe of batter.
These cupcakes are light, airy and rich in buttery-flavour, made even more decadent by the addition of my classic and go-to buttercream icing, learned from my mom. I hope you enjoy these celebration cupcakes the next time you have an occasion to celebrate...even if your celebration revolves around the season finale of The Real Housewives of Vancouver.

Celebration Cupcakes!

(exclamation point required)
Adapted from the above mentioned Canadian Living and Mark McEwan recipes.
Makes approximately 40 regular sized cupcakes or 24 regular and 36 mini cupcakes.

Cupcakes

1 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean-paste which I've been looking for and finally found at Homesense!)
4 eggs
3 cups cake and pastry flour
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 1/2 cups plain (2%) yogurt

Line appropriate sized cupcake pans with paper liners.
Pre-heat oven to 350.

Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside dry ingredients.

Butter and sugar getting light and fluffy

In a large bowl and using a hand blender, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, being sure to incorporate each egg fully before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla and scrape down the sides of the bowl well.

Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the butter/egg mixture, blending with the hand mixer until just incorporated. Add half the yogurt to the mixture, blending until just incorporated. Add another third of the dry ingredients, followed by the remaining half of the yogurt and ending with the last of the dry ingredients. You should have made five additions in total, ending with the dry ingredients. Be sure not to over beat this mixture or your cupcakes will be tough.

The prepared batter 

Fill your prepared cupcake pans with batter, being sure not to over-fill. Each cupcake liner should be no more than 3/4 full.

Prepare cupcakes, ready to bake

Bake the cupcakes until lightly golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre of a cupcake comes out clean. This will take approximately 20 minutes for larger cupcakes and about 10 for minis. Check the cakes early and trust your toothpick rather than timing estimates as each oven is different.

Place pans on a wire rack too cool for 15 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans to wire rack and allow to cool completely before frosting, at least 3 hours.

Field of cupcakes!

Easy Butter Cream Icing 

1 cup of butter, softened
6 cups icing sugar
2 - 4 tbsp milk or cream (more or less, consistency is what you're looking for here)
vanilla to taste (start with about 1 tsp and taste as you go)


To make the icing, use the biggest bowl you have. This will prevent a fine layer of icing sugar from covering your entire kitchen. Beat the butter in the bowl using a hand mixer until its fluffy. Add the icing sugar and beat again. At this point, the butter will not have absorbed all the icing sugar and you will need to determine how much milk you will need. Start with 2 tbsp and work your way up. The icing needs to be stiff enough to stand a rubber spatula straight up in it, without being so stiff that piping the cupcakes is an exercise for your forearms. Once you've achieved the right consistency, add the vanilla.
If you're celebrating events other than baby showers or children's birthdays, you can substitute half of the milk or cream for a tasty alcohol, like spiced rum, Bailey's, brandy or Grand Marnier. Use you're judgement and taste here - if you like to drink it, it will probably taste good with cake, but avoid overly-sweet alcohol. We did just add 6 cups of sugar to this icing...

Its perfectly acceptable to slather/spackle these cakes using a butter knife, rather than piping them. I personally find it easier to use a piping bag fitted with a GIANT tip. I use disposable piping bags that you can buy individually at Bulk Barn, along with a BIG star tip. Using a big tip looks professional and makes the icing process go quickly so that you can get down to the business of eating and celebrating.

If you're going to use a piping bag, fit the bag with the tip, and holding the bag with your non-dominate hand and the tip facing down, fold the top 1/3 of the bag over your hand. Your hand acts like a collar for the piping bag. Using a spatula, fill the bag till the top of your hand-collar, twist the bag closed, and get on your merry way. When I ice, I work from the outside in, following around the outside of the cupcake and making smaller concentric circles until I end up in the middle. I leave you to conduct your own YouTube searches for further instruction. When icing, remember the Ms. Meals mantra and own it. If you don't like what you've iced, scrape the icing off, put it back in the bag and start again. No matter who they look, they will taste DIVINE!

Mini foods are instantly cuter!

TIP: Beyond easy clean-up, another benefit of the disposable piping bags is that any left over icing can be left in the piping bag, still fitted with the tip and frozen for later use. Simply wrap the piping tip in plastic wrap, and pop the whole thing in your freezer. Defrost overnight in the fridge. The next time you make cupcakes, you'll have prepared icing, ready to go.