Vanilla Cupcakes Recipes from scratch

These perfect Vanilla Cupcakes will easily become your go-to recipe! This is the BEST Vanilla Cupcake Recipe EVER!

This might seem like a boring topic today…

Vanilla Cupcakes.

But let me ‘splain something to you. This is serious-talk time.

Without a good vanilla cupcake in your arsenal you’re nothing.

Ok, that was a little extreme.

Certainly you’re SOMETHING.

Ok, let’s start over.

Vanilla Cupcakes. They are the blueprint…the baseline…the test to whether to not you can actually bake.

Again, I guess that’s extreme… I need to settle down.

Let’s put it this way. Anyone can bake a cupcake, fill it with frosting, top it with more frosting, drizzle some caramel and add some candy and have it taste good. Because, HELLO, you can’t actually taste the cake! I’m guilty of this 1000 times over, I get it.

But whenever I go to a bakery, I always, ALWAYS try their vanilla. You have to.

Dry vanilla cake? You’re dead to me.

Too crumbly? DEAD.

Cornbread-ish…you know what I’m talking about…SIX FEET UNDER.

But a good vanilla cupcake and you’re forever my bestie, my boo, my numero uno.

I will tell you, I have tried my fair share of recipes, that’s for sure. And I actually have a great white cake recipe that I LOVE, but it has vegetable shortening in it. And I get death threats every time I share a recipe with shortening (I’ll share that another day when I’m feeling less fragile).

So today we’re talking vanilla…Buttery vanilla cupcakes. Which is what I will present to you.

My favorite vanilla cupcake recipe…

I also have to tell you…I live in a house where boxed cake mix is the favorite.

Not MY favorite, but my husband’s for sure. I have attempted vanilla cupcakes time and time again only to be shot down with, “too dense”, “just eh”, “not your usual” (and by usual he means Duncan Hines…

So when this recipe got the thumbs up from him I knew it was a keeper.

I will say that it is a little denser than a box cake…but it’s the perfect consistency for frosting. Sometimes I find boxed cake a little too squishy to hold up to my beloved buttercream.

This one is fluffy, but not airy, if that makes any sense at all.

And the flavor…well, perfection.

Let’s get started.

First cut your butter into cubes.
Put all your dry ingredients(sugar too) into the bowl of your mixer and turn it onto low and let the mixer combine them. Kinda like sifting or whisking, but easier!

Then drop our butter a few cubes at a time into the mixer…
It’ll come together like this…
Kinda like that powdered Parmesan cheese in the can. (Sorry, it’s true)
Then add your milk and vanilla…
And mix that for about 2 minutes. Your batter will be thick, but smooth.

Fill your cupcake liners 2/3 full. This equals approximately 1/4 cup batter.
Bake them for 15-20 minutes depending on your oven and you will get perfect domes.
I frosted mine with my favorite buttercream frosting.
Totally easy and really delicious.

Feel free to get creative with your frosting. I used a Wilton 1M tip for the rosettes, and just an off-set spatula for the others that I edged in sprinkles.
You should totally try these if you’re vanilla cupcake challenged.