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.
Thank you so much for this recipe! I have tried to bake cupcakes four times and have failed each time! I did my research on learning to bake and after much hours of searching on the internet I decided to try your recipe. They turned out AWESOME! So moist, flavourful and yummy! Thank you very much! I have my confidence back;) Much love from Toronto 😉
Hi,this is a great recipe. I’ve been searching for the perfect vanilla cupcake recipes for years. I was initially worried that the sugar might be too much but I tried it out today. I doubled the recipe and made a batch of 12 cupcakes and two 6 by 2inches round cakes. They were not too sweet. Just perfect! Hope to try out the vanilla cream cheese frosting next week. Here in Nigeria,cake flour and buttermilk are difficult to come by, so I used the all purpose flour/corn starch and evaporated milk/vinegar substitutions and they still turned out great-really light and fluffy.
I was wondering if the cake can hold the weight of fondant. I’m considering baking a larger cake using this recipe. Can I cover it with fondant without the cake collapsing? Thanks a lot for sharing.
Hi BeeGee, So glad you’ve enjoyed this recipe! Yes, I think this cake should be able to hold up to a thin layer of fondant. The largest I’ve made the layers for this cake is 8″ diameter, so I’m not sure what size you were thinking.
after making these cupcakes, i trust your recipes implicitly :):):) thank you for taking the time to perfect it and for sharing it with us, this really is the perfect vanilla cupcake!
What brand of cake flour do you use? I prefer whole foods and bleach free brands!
Thanks
I usually use Swan flour, but have no real brand preference. I think all cake flour is bleached. I too usually prefer unbleached flour, but cake flour does offer a texture than is hard to achieve any other way. Feel free to make a cake flour alternative using unbleached, all purpose flour and corn starch. For each cup of cake flour, use 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons. Replace the 2 tablespoons with corn starch, and sift well.
I have made these cupcakes for my son’s 3rd birthday party and they came out perfectly!!! I am so happy with the result that I plan to do another set for my elder son’s 6th birthday party. I almost thought I lost the website and I have searched for two days to find it and couldn’t so then I checked again in my favorites and there it was…. what a relieve! Thank you so much for sharing this Gloria!
I am only in high school and I am not good at baking so I just wanted to say this recipe is amazing. I made these cupcakes in mini cupcake liners because I ran out of the regular kind and the recipe makes 3 dozen. This is the first food I have baked from scratch and i’m so proud. I did come across difficulties with the icing suggested with this. the icing was really liquidy like batter. However I did use milk instead of cream soo that might be it. Other wise wonderful 🙂
Hi
I tried your perfect vanilla cupcakes but substituted the buttermilk with milk and vinegar. Taste was great but my cupcakes came out lopsided. All of them seemed to dome towards one direction in the oven. Would you know what could have caused it? I tried another vegetarian cupcake recipe which I do and it turned out very well. Just like the ones on your site.
Hi Glory!
I’m starting to bake these cupcakes and they look wonderful already! Even though I’m using all purpose flour I will try my best to succeed!
These are indeed the Perfect Vanilla Cupcake! I made a batch and a half Thursday night for a baby shower on Friday along with a batch and a half of the cream cheese frosting since I was going to do swirl tops on them (I too have a ton of leftover frosting – guess i’ll *have* to make more cupcakes!!). Thank you for your baking sacrifices to come up with these – these will be my “go to” recipes now 🙂 DELISH!!
I was looking for the perfect cupcake recipe when I came across this. I made these yesterday and they are amazing! They taste SO GOOD! Especially with the cream cheese frosting! We can’t get cake flour in Australia, so I looked online for a substitute. Ended up using 1 cup plain flour and 1/4 cup corn flour, not sure if that was right, but the cupcakes turned out awesome! I also didn’t realise how much cream cheese frosting there would be! I have heaps left over, so I am going to make some more of these amazing cupcakes tomorrow! Thanks so much for such a great recipe 😀