Step-By-Step Guide On How to Make Cupcakes

Step 1: Prepare Ingredients

Allow the butter and eggs to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. This will make the butter easier to blend. Room-temperature eggs allow more air to be incorporated into your batter for a lighter texture. Grease and flour twelve 2½-inch muffin cups or line with paper baking cups. Set aside.

Step 2: Combine Butter and Sugar

Many cupcake recipes call for beating the butter and sugar together for 1 minute using a hand mixer or stand mixer. This is called creaming, and it creates little pockets of air in the mixture, resulting in light and fluffy cupcakes. Just be sure not to overbeat the mixture. You can tell you’ve gone too far if the butter starts to separate.

Step 3: Add Eggs and Vanilla

After creaming the butter and sugar, most cupcake recipes next call for adding the eggs. Depending on the recipe, you may add whole eggs, just egg yolks, or just egg whites. Some recipes include other ingredients to add along with the eggs, such as vanilla or other flavorings.

Step 4: Alternate Adding Dry and Wet Ingredients

In a separate mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients, such as flour, salt, and baking powder. Most cupcake recipes call for alternately adding dry and wet ingredients (like milk or cream) and beating between each addition. Don’t be tempted to add everything at once. Adding all the wet ingredients at once can cause the batter to separate, resulting in a heavy cake. Adding all the dry ingredients at once can make the batter too thick, leading to overmixing.

Step 5: Fill the Cupcake Liners

When you’re learning how to make cupcakes, you may wonder how much batter to use per cupcake. For standard 2½-inch cupcakes, fill cupcake liners with ¼ cup batter to about ⅔ to ¾ of the way full. Avoid adding too much batter, or the cupcakes will overflow the cups as they bake and cause a mess. Here are some easy ways to fill cupcake liners with cupcake batter:

• If the batter is thick, use two spoons to scoop it into the cups.
• Use a medium ice cream or cookie scoop to spoon batter into the cups.
• Fill a heavy resealable plastic bag with batter and cut a small hole in one corner. Squeeze the bag gently to fill the cups. Plug the bag’s hole with your finger as you move it to the next cup.
• If your batter is thin, pour it into a large glass measuring cup. The spout on the measuring cup will make it easier to fill cupcake liners with batter.

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