Our resident baking savant and senior associate food editor Claire Saffitz's idea of a good time involves whipping up homemade bagels on the fly. There's no one else we trust more to develop the cupcake recipe of our dreams, and she came up with not only one, but three recipes for yellow, white, and devil's food cupcakes that take us straight back to our childhoods. It turns out creating the perfect cupcake is way more complicated than taking cake batter and plopping it into muffin tins—here's how Saffitz did it.
Most cake recipes direct you to cream butter and sugar, add your eggs, then finally incorporate your dry ingredients like flour, baking powder, and baking soda. The problem with this method is it's all too easy to overmix your batter, which encourages gluten development that results in a tougher cake. Instead, Saffitz starts her cupcake batter by first mixing the dry ingredients with the fat (in this case, butter and a little vegetable oil for moistness) and some liquid (buttermilk) before finally adding the eggs. This "reverse-creaming" method results in a super tender, springy cupcake that still sports a perfect dome for covering with frosting.
The kind of muffin tin you use will affect both the baking time and the final look of your cupcakes. Remember this rule: The darker the pan, the darker your baked goods will get (particularly around the edges). For these cupcakes, our Test Kitchen prefers the evenly golden hue achieved with aluminum muffin tins, but use whatever pan you've got at home—just keep an eye on the oven in the final minutes of baking to make sure they don't burn.
When Saffitz tried developing her devil's food cupcakes using Dutch-process cocoa powder, which produces an intensely dark "chocolatey" color, she had a hard time getting the cupcakes to rise properly and create that coveted dome. The solution: Use a regular unsweetened cocoa powder and check the label to make sure it doesn't say "Dutch process."
There's a time and place for a fancy, egg-based European-style buttercream frosting. This is not that time. Simple cupcakes need an equally simple frosting, so we've opted for a version that whips up in minutes and isn't overpoweringly sweet or buttery, thanks to the addition of tangy cream cheese. Now grab that offset spatula and swoop away!
Yellow Cupcakes
Devil's Food Cupcakes
White Cupcakes
Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting
Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Your frosting skills will take the, uh, cake: