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 am I able to use this recipe for a giant cupcake? My regular cupcakes have come out perfect every time so would like to use it for the giant cupcake. Thank you
Where can i buy brown cupcake liners? The link provided is from SimplyCaked, and that website isn’t there anymore. Thanks!
followed your recipe to the letter and note details very first second too sweet, baking powder and baking the mixture thus completely overflowed
For these cupcakes (and for your cuppies in general), do you have a “perfected” reduced baking time if you are making these in miniature form? I am making mini-cupcakes for a bridal shower at the end of this month and thought I’d ask the pro before doing the trial and error method 😉
Hi,
I am a Canadian living just outside of Zurich in Switzerland. Missing cupcakes since they are not a ‘normal’ baked goodie here. The ones you can find in some bakeries or the local Starbucks are — well let’s just say ‘not the same’ – not even close. Using polite language to describe their sub-standard level. No matter though I love to bake and never usually buy baked goods anyway.
Another thing which we are lacking is Cake flour (6%-8% protein content). Which in my opinion is the only way to go when baking cakes or cupcakes. The best they have here is a bio all-purpose flour with a protein content of 10% (lower than the other APF here at 12%).
so…. in my quest to try to find the perfect Vanilla Cupcake recipe which uses all-purpose flour i came across your recipe for the perfect vanilla cupcake. alas, it uses cake flour. but, i laughed and laughed and read your article twice! so true every word. i have been doing exactly the same thing for about a week now. testing, re-testing, googling so much that Google actually sent me warnings a few times because of my suspicious over use / too much activity. they couldn’t accept it was real – that much googling for similar things
“Vanilla Cupcake” AND “sour cream” AND all-purpose OR all purpose -yogurt
as an example
I went through, am still going through, each and every hoop that you had to crawl through on this journey to cupcake bliss. I have the added challenge that i am doomed to use all purpose flour at the lack of cake flour here.
I even went out and bought a special digital thermometer so that i could measure the internal temperature of the eggs, butter and any dairy products to make sure they were exactly 21C (room temperature – not more or less) and to measure the internal temperature of my cupcakes to make sure they were 96 to 98 C (internal cupcake / cake temp when done). All this as an attempt to find out why they ALWAYS seem to be so dense / not as fluffy as I would like. I know I use top quality ingredients (bloomin heck – went through way too much expensive vanilla, eggs and butter – not to mention that bio flour – in this process). I watched a zillion youtube videos on creaming, folding, mixing, measuring. I Googled until I annoyed even Google. Twice they contacted me — no kidding – didnt know that was possible.
All in all you came up with more or less the same result that I knew in my heart of hearts. Cake flour is a key. I will need to suck it up and pay the costs of getting some cake flour from England (at almost 14 US dollars for a 2lb bag of cake flour that is a HUGE expense!). And for sure a recipe which uses the RIGHT combination of baking powder AND baking soda AND salt (some omit the salt) is a must.
I tried sooooo many recipes. Unfortunately i have no will powder and ate most of them , all by myself, even if they weren’t perfect – and so far none have had the ‘perfect’ consistency that i MUST have. i will not give them away unless they are AWESOME!
so, once i get my hands on, what is sure to be the world’s, most expensive flour, I will give your ultimate vanilla cupcakes a go with cake flour. another down side is that the delivery will take some weeks. bummer 🙁
thanks for the laughs and going through ALL of these cupcake trial and errors and expensive and sharing it with the world.
Kathleen 🙂
Thanks for sharing the recipe, it looks moist and delicious!
OMG these are delucious!!! They are fluffy, moist, and the outer shell is crispy. I also made the cake version and it was a hit.
Abita Springs, LA
I made these vanilla cupcakes in the exact way. As the name says its PERFECT.
I just made these and they turned out light and fluffy yet you can really taste the oil and I think it made for an off texture. I followed the recipe to the T, is it supposed to be like that? Anyone else find this happening? I was so excited when I found this because I too have been on the hunt for the perfect vanilla recipe….I thought oil would do the trick vice butter because boxed cake calls for oil.
These are so divine- they have become my go-to recipe now, too! I even use them to make my Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes and they hold the lemon curd filling well and are a hit every time! Super tasty and super moist, thank you for sharing.
I plan to doubled it to make a cake like you suggested but I am unsure how long to cook it for. Any suggestions?
Thanks again!