A truly perfect Vanilla Cupcake recipe! These Vanilla Cupcakes are easy to make, moist, and bake up beautifully every time! Light, fluffy and flavorful! Got the baking bug? Try my Lemon Cupcakes and Chocolate Cupcakes too!
Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes Recipe
This week I’ve made 6 batches of vanilla cupcakes and a vanilla cake. I feel like my oven has been on for 42 hours straight! =) What are all these cupcakes for, you might ask. Well, for me… and for science, and for you too. Confused yet? I’ll explain…
I have been on a search for a perfect vanilla cupcake recipe for several years. I have tried Martha’s, Magnolia’s, Billy’s and Amy Sedaris’. I’ve read the Cake Bible from cover to cover (really!). I’ve googled until I can’t google anymore! Some of the recipes were good, just not perfect. I’ve considered just giving up… maybe my expectations were to high. I wanted a vanilla cupcake recipe that was as light and fluffy as a box mix, but without all the funny chemicals. I wanted a cupcake that was flavorful and moist. And I wanted it to be almost as easy to make from scratch as from a box.
The BEST Vanilla Cupcakes
This week, I wasn’t going to stop until I found what I was looking for. So I baked and baked… then went to the store for more butter and sugar, and baked some more! I tried recipes with butter, oil, or some of both… recipes with milk, buttermilk, or sour cream… 1 egg, 2 eggs, 5 eggs… baking powder, baking soda… bake at 350*, bake at 325*…
I made cupcakes that were lopsided, over-flowing, over-baked, and just plain ugly…
And then I made these…
They looked beautiful and tasted perfect, so I double checked all my notes to make sure I could remember what I put in them… then I made another batch to make sure it was THE ONE.
They were just as perfect!! I think I heard angels singing….
I am SO happy to share the results of my many experiments! These cupcakes were absolutely delicious and I look forward to making them again and again. Now certainly, peoples tastes and preferences vary greatly. I love these, my husband (my #1 taste tester) loves them, and I hope many of you will too. As with any recipe, it is very important to use the best quality ingredients you can.
Ingredients Needed
You will notice the recipe calls for cake flour, which is a bit more expensive than all-purpose flour, but I have found it is essential to produce the light and fluffy texture I was looking for. Also, the recipe uses oil instead of butter. I realized most cupcake recipes (from scratch) call for butter, and yet box mixes (which have the texture I was looking for) are baked using oil.
I was concerned that using only oil would leave the cupcakes without adequate flavor, but I found that with good quality vanilla, these cupcakes are delicious and flavorful.
- 1 1/4 cups cake flour
- 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup oil (vegetable, canola or extra light olive oil)
- 1/3 cup milk (whole or low fat, but avoid fat free)
- 1/3 cup sour cream (full fat or light, but avoid fat free)
How To Make Vanilla Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 350*F.
- In a medium bowl, add cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir together with whisk, and set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, add eggs and beat 10-20 seconds. Add sugar and continue to beat on medium speed about 30 seconds. Add vanilla and oil, beat.
- Reduce mixer speed to low and slowly add about half of the flour mixture. Add the milk, then the rest of the flour and the sour cream. Beat until just combined. Scrap down the side of the bowl.
- The batter will be thin. Pour batter into a muffin pan prepared with paper liners. Fill liners about 2/3 full.
- Bake cupcakes in pre-heated oven for 12-14 minutes.
- Cool in pan 1-2 minutes, then remove cupcakes from pan (carefully) and finish cooling on a wire rack.
- Frost as desired when fully cool. I love to use my favorite Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting recipe.
- Feel free to use this recipe for a cake as well. The recipe above will work for a 6″ cake. Double the recipe for an 8″ or 9″ cake.
* A note about Cake Flour- Cake Flour has a lower protein content than traditional all-purpose flour, which results in a more tender, delicate crumb in the finished product. If you can not find or access cake flour, feel free to substitute as necessary, but your results will vary from the original recipe.
RECIPE UPDATES
I have made this recipe many times with success, but in an effort to always be improving (even great recipes) I’ve made a couple small updates to this recipe (which are now listed in the recipe card).
My original recipe included 1 1/4 tsp. baking powder (now reduced to 3/4), 3/4 cup sugar (now increased to 1 cup) and 1/2 cup buttermilk (now updated to 1/3 cup milk, 1/3 cup sour cream).
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More Cupcake Recipes
How To Make Vanilla Cupcakes
Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups cake flour
- 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup oil vegetable, canola or extra light olive oil
- 1/3 cup milk whole or low fat, but avoid fat free
- 1/3 cup sour cream full fat or light, but avoid fat free
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350*F.
- In a medium bowl, add cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir together with whisk, and set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, add eggs and beat 10-20 seconds. Add sugar and continue to beat on medium speed about 30 seconds. Add vanilla and oil, beat.
- Reduce mixer speed to low and slowly add about half of the flour mixture. Add the milk, then the rest of the flour and the sour cream. Beat until just combined. Scrap down the side of the bowl.
- The batter will be thin. Pour batter into a muffin pan prepared with paper liners. Fill liners about 2/3 full.
- Bake cupcakes in pre-heated oven for 12-14 minutes.
- Cool in pan 1-2 minutes, then remove cupcakes from pan (carefully) and finish cooling on a wire rack.
- Frost as desired when fully cool. I love to use my favorite cream cheese frosting or buttercream frosting with these cupcakes.
Hi, I’m looking for a vanilla cupcake to bake for a baby shower. I wanted to fill them with a raspberry seedless jam and was wondering if you thought these would hold up for the filling. I am unsure where you say these are light and fluffy. I may try a batch today just to see if it works. Thanks for sharing and any help with my question would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, these would hold up to a filling nicely. Feel free to experiment. Happy Baking!
Hi, This is an awesome sharing! Thank you in advance.
I am intending to bake this for my daughter’s bithday, If I were to do it in a 9 x 13 inch rect tray ( 3 recipes needed) How long do you think I need to bake it for?
Bless you.
Hello, I first of all would like to thank you for all of the wonderful ideas you share. It’s truly inspirational. I was very excited to find your recipe for these “perfect Vanilla cupcakes” and immediately thought that I would have to try them. I always have issues with my cupcakes doming/ peaking too high in the middle and unfortunately, the same happened with these. I absolutely love the taste and texture but I don’t know what I am doing wrong to have them peak so high. My second batch I experimented a little by reducing the oven temperature and varied the amount of mixture I put in. They all still peaked. They start off flat but in the last 6 minutes they peak up. Mine also look more golden than yours. The only thing I can think of that was different to yours is I used caster sugar (fine) and not the standard type of sugar.
I would truly appreciate any suggestions you might think of to help me correct this problem.
Many many thank yous to you and many kind regards.
Just wanted to say, “Thank you, thank you!” for this recipe. I, too, have been searching for the perfect scratch vanilla cupcake recipe and this is it. I made these cupcakes with a brown sugar frosting, and they were fabulous! Thanks again.
Thank you! i can not wait to try this recipe, it looks perfect! i work for my brother at his childrens English school in Tianjin, China, tomorrow we are baking cupcakes with the children and i needed a recipe that was simmple and called for oil (butter is harder to find here in china) i was afraid i would not find it until i stumbled across this site, thank you or helping, the kids and i are very grateful.
search on,
Melissa Marie Hoopingarner
OMG. You’ve saved my sanity and probably my life with this recipe. It’s perfect. It’s the texture of a box mix, but the flavor of homemade, and the little cupcakes are just beautiful with the speckles of vanilla bean. They’re all just so lovely. We made a batch last night that turned out 12 normal sized cupcakes and about 80 minis. My only sad thought about these cupcakes is that it’s so perfect that we can’t use our Nutella Buttercream with them! The buttercream takes away from the perfectness of the cupcakes, and makes it a little overwhelming I think. We’re going to try your vanilla cream cheese frosting recipe, and I’ll probably cry a little bit from sheer happiness when I taste it. Thank you thank you thank you!
My cousin and I are going to use this recipe to make rainbow cupcakes with a butter cream frosting… Yummy 😀 <3
Made these the other night – they were super easy and super delicious. I didn’t have buttermilk so I used 1/2 tsp vinegar in the milk, let it sit for 10 mins. I used extra virgin olive oil and 1 cup of sugar. I was nervous because the batter was so thin. But they came out perfect and delicious! I measured 1/4 cup of batter and got exactly 18 cupcakes that were just the right size with an ever so slight dome. PERFECTION! I will definitely use this for my go to vanilla cake recipe. Thank you so much!
hi Glory! thank u so much for this recipe, but i just have one question: Do you use cupcake trays or just regular trays (like the one in the picture) for baking? thank u:)
I bake the cupcakes in muffin/cupcake pans. The cupkcakes pictured are cool. Once I bake my cupcakes, I remove them from the hot pan within a few minutes, cool them on a wire rack, then transfer them to a large baking sheet (as shown), to frost them.
These vanilla cupcakes are fab. I have been looking for a good recipe for a long time. Once I sawthe oil and the buttermilk in the recipe I sort of knew it would be perfect. Thank you