Cupcakes to Celebrate ‘Murrrrica

I had zero posts in June. Sorry about that. I wasn’t on much of a baking or cooking kick during the beginning of the summer but now I’m back into the swing of things and here I am! I was flipping through the most recent issue of Food Network magazine and came across a recipe for stars & stripes cupcakes. My original idea was to just do red and white frosting, however, I decided to go with red and blue instead. As you’ll see in the photos below, they came out a bit more pastel than they should have but who cares? They were delicious! Below is my take on Food Network’s recipe (note: I changed a few things here and there).

• Cupcake Ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cups AP Flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
• 2 whole Eggs
• 1 1/2 sticks Unsalted Butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1/3 cup Milk (I used cashew milk since that’s all I keep in my house but you can use any kind of milk you desire)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners; set aside.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Combine the sugar and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer, fixed with the paddle attachment. Beat the sugar and eggs on medium-high speed until pale and thick, about 2 minutes. Beat in the melted butter and vanilla until smooth. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in half of the flour mixture, the milk, then the remaining flour mixture until smooth.
3. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes (or until a cake tester comes out clean). Remove cupcakes from oven and allow them to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

Before the frosting. The most perfect vanilla cupcakes I have ever seen!

• Frosting Ingredients:
• 2 sticks Unsalted Butter, room temp.
• 2 cups Confectioners’ Sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1/2 teaspoon Coffee Extract (you can substitute this with any additional extract you would like, I used this just to cut the sweetness a bit)
• 2-3 tablespoons Milk (again, you can use any milk you like)
• 8 drops Red Food Coloring (adjust the number of drops to desired shade of red)
• 6 drops Blue Food Coloring (adjust the same way you did with the red)

1. Beat the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer, fixed with the paddle attachment, until creamy (about 1 minute). Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth, then beat in the vanilla and coffee extracts. Beat in the milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, until creamy.
2. Transfer half of the frosting to a separate bowl and tint with red food coloring. Tint the other half of the frosting with blue food coloring. Frost the cooled cupcakes.
3. Enjoy!

Patriotic Cupcakes!

As I mentioned above, these came out delicious. The cupcakes are great on their own and the frosting is perfect if you play with the sugar and extracts (the original recipe called for 3 cups of sugar but I knew that would be way too sweet). If I were to make these again for the 4th of July, I would definitely add more food coloring to perk the colors up a bit.