Duff Goldman's Vanilla Cupcakes With Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

In all of my baking I have yet to find a decent vanilla cake-from-scratch recipe. Duff is the guy from Ace of Cakes so I figured this recipe would be a good one. I stumbled across it while reading another baker's blog, I Heart Cuppycakes. I ended up halving the recipe but here are the ingredients that make the full cake.

Makes two 9-inch pan cakes or approx. 36 cupcakes

3-1/2 cups AP flour
2-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, unsalted
2 cups sugar
4 tsp vanilla extract
6 eggs
3 tbsp canola oil
2/3 cup buttermilk

INSTRUCTIONS

Pre-heat oven to 350 ° F

Begin by creaming the butter in with the sugar until light, mixing with a hand held beater or stand mixer.

Once the butter is creamy, add the vanilla. Then add in the eggs one at a time while beating. The batter will begin to look as if it is curdled, but this is OK! Next add your butter milk and oil and mix thoroughly.

In a separate bowl, sift together the baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour to mix. Add the flour slowly to the wet ingredients, blending thoroughly as you go.

Line the cupcake tins with liners and fill about 2/3 full with batter. Bake about 17-20 minutes, depending on your oven, or until a toothpick stuck in the middle of the cupcake comes out clean. Let cool.

VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

Soooo bad, yet SO GOOD!

Ingredients

4 sticks of Butter (2 cups)

6 cups of sifted confectioner's sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

Pinch of salt

Cream the butter (this may take a few minutes!). Then add the confectioner's sugar 1/2 cup at a time, mix generously in between additions.

After all the sugar is added , add the vanilla and salt and mix. You're done!

I halved this recipe as well, almost didnt have enough for all of my cupcakes! Next time I will have to plan to make a little bit more!

Thoughts: The frosting was unreal!!! I wish I had planned to make more, but oh well! I thought the cake was going to be amazing, and it definitely wasn't bad, but I was a little let down. It wasn't as moist as I had hope, and I baked it for less than the allotted time (only 16 minutes!). Maybe it was my non-stick pan (I think they tend to burn things easily) or the scaling down of the recipes... Regardless, my roommate said they were delicious!