the quest for a perfect cupcake recipe

Ok so I can't find the perfect cupcake here in Baton Rouge and Magnolia Bakery and Butter Lane have no immediate plans for locations here so I have started my very own test kitchen to see what I can come up with. I spent about (no kidding here) 4 hours at Borders looking for the book of cupcake recipes and found nothing that I could have faith in as the cupcake bible. So after a some time online I found this recipe










Butter ½ cup + 1 tablespoon (127g) unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon (162g) caster sugar
½ vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups + 1 tablespoon (185g) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup (120ml) milk


Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºC. Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs and beat well. Sift over the flour and baking powder and beat until combined. Add the milk and mix.
Spoon the mixture into eleven 1/3-cup capacity muffin pans lined with paper cases. Bake for 15-17 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer. Remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

I added a simple icing of powdered sugar and lemon juice and decorated with a little curl of lemon zest.


And while good it is not "the" cupcake. Rather bland and dense it would be a good base for some awesome icing. I continue my quest. I went to Whole Foods today and invested in more vanilla beans, almond extract and buttermilk. I'll keep you updated.