Quick Sugar Fix! White Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream

I've been off work for almost two weeks, spending my days home with my 3 1/2 year old son. I love him beyond words, but being a single parent to an incredibly smart and active boy with ADHD can be exhausting.  Especially when said child thinks he can thrive on 6 hours of sleep a night! The last few days have been especially trying- for both of us I'm sure- I'm ready to go back to work, and I'm sure he's ready to go back to "school".

I was feeling slightly overwhelmingly grumpy yesterday afternoon, and took advantage of the fact that when I sent Ben into his room to clean up the disaster area, he passed out on his bean bag.

The only time he's ever used the bean bag, other than to climb on...and the mess is still there! Argh!

I was craving something sweet, but not too heavy. I decided to remake the cake portion of a recipe I made over the weekend, except as cupcakes..and with a Lemon Buttercream frosting instead of the super rich caramel frosting that was on the Dulce de Leche cake I made for the Labor Day BBQ I went to. (I'll post that cake as soon as my lovely friend Kaytie sends me the pics...my cell pics don't do that cake justice!)

This is my new favorite white cake recipe! It's light, moist, bakes evenly....it's lovely! It worked well in the Dulce de Leche cake, and worked just as well for these cupcakes. I baked 12, froze the rest of the batter, and wrapped 6 of the cupcakes up and stuck them in the freezer as well for the next time I need a quick fix!

White Cake adapted from Sporkorfoon, who adapted it from Cook's Illustrated


2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1 cup milk (original calls for whole, I used 2%)
3/4 cup egg whites (6 large or 8 medium)
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pans- will make 2 9-inch layers, or approximately 30 regular sized cupcakes. Mix dry ingredients in large bowl with a wire whisk, and set aside. Pour milk, eggwhites and vanilla into a smaller bowl and whisk until combined. Add butter to dry ingredients, and mix with electric mixer on medium speed until mixture resembles crumbs. Add all but 1/4 cup of milk mixture, and beat on high speed with hand mixer (medium if you're a bigshot with a stand mixer) for 1 1/2 minutes. Scrape down sides of the bowl, add the remaining milk, and beat for an additional 30 seconds.

Pour into pans or prepared muffin tins, filling 2/3 of the way full. Bake cakes at 350 for 23-25 minutes, cupcakes for 18 minutes.

Lemon Buttercream Icing (didn't follow a recipe, just threw together a few things and was lucky that it turned out well!)

**I was only icing 6 cupcakes, so increase measurements accordingly for larger batches**

1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon extract
2-3 tablespoons of milk
2 drops yellow gel food coloring

Cream butter in bowl using electric mixer. Add sugar in small batches, adding milk a tablespoon at a time to achieve desired consistency. Add food coloring if desired, and lemon extract. Decorate however you see fit at the time- for me, it was colored sanding sugar!!

Enjoy!