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Last week was my friend Rachel’s birthday. She lives in Chicago, so although I didn’t get to celebrate on the day with her, I made her some of these lemon vanilla cupcakes last weekend when she was in town. I didn’t get them frosted before she left (whoops) but since she’s not a frosting fan anyway (weirdo) it all worked out. Of course, as soon as I had a spare moment I piped some buttercream on top – a cupcake without frosting is basically just a muffin, right?
There will be SO MUCH cake in my life this week. I was finally forced to take these cupcakes to work today to stop myself from eating them all at once, and tonight I bake cake #2 for a co-worker’s son’s birthday. Then Friday is Kyle’s 24th, which means even MORE cake! Oy.
So, yeah. SO. MUCH. CAKE.
Not that I’m complaining. Obviously. Cake is the best. And I love getting to bake for people’s birthdays, because it’s always a good excuse to try out a new cake or cupcake recipe (AND to have a dedicated group of taste-testers that will help you eat it all!)
Long story short: if anyone else is in the mood for cake this week, tell me now. I’m on a roll.
(PS HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY RACH! THESE ARE FOR YOUUUU)
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
- 1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1–1/2 tsp. lemon juice
- 1 tsp. lemon zest
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup buttermilk (see how I make my own buttermilk in this recipe)
For the Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:
- 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 Tbsp. milk
- 2 cups powdered sugar (give or take, depending on what kind of consistency you want. I like my frosting pretty thick because it holds up well when it’s piped or it’s warm outside)
Instructions
For the Cupcakes:
- In a stand mixer, cream together butter, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest, and sugar.
- Add the egg and the egg white one at a time to the mixer while it runs on low speed.
- In a small bowl, sift together the flour and salt.
- In a glass measuring cup, make your buttermilk. (In this case, I used 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar + milk until the mixture measured 1/2 cup.)
- Add the baking soda to the buttermilk (trust me) and stir. The baking soda will react with the vinegar and your mixture will swell up a bit and take on a foamy consistency. This is what you want!
- Alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture (starting and ending with flour so as not to deflate the batter) to the batter, mixing after each addition until all the flour and buttermilk have been incorporated into the batter.
- Pour batter into cupcake pans and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Let cool and top with your choice of frosting. I used Vanilla Buttercream! (Recipe below).
For the Vanilla Buttercream:
- In a medium bowl, cream together butter, vanilla, and 1/4 cup of the powdered sugar. (This is easy to do by hand but also works great in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment).
- Add 1 Tbsp. of the milk and another 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar and mix well.
- Add remaining milk and stir.
- Add remaining powdered sugar as needed until your frosting has achieved your desired consistency. (I usually use all 2 cups, sometimes more.)
- Frost your cupcakes and dig in!
Hi this is a delicious recipe! I made the frosting today to practice frosting the cupcakes. I will be serving these in 2 weeks. I’m planning on freezing the cupcakes in frosted and frosting them thon day of the party. Will the frosting last in the fridge for these 2 weeks?
HELP! I made these cupcakes for a birthday party, but I’m tasting them now and they have a lingering baking-soda aftertaste. What did I do wrong? How can I avoid that??
Hi Ellie, I’m so sorry to hear that! It’s impossible for me to know without being in the kitchen with you, but I’d start by troubleshooting with my Cupcakes 101 series and see if that helps!
Hi.thank you so much for this. By 1c do you mean 1 cup? and what do you mean by 2% milk?
Yes, 1 cup. 2% refers to the fat content of the milk – you can read more about that here. Hope that helps!
hi Jessie,
is it really ok without baking soda because i also bake a vanilla cupcake last night and it was hard, i thought it was because i didnot add baking soda
Does it matter if you use store bought buttermilk, or should I make my own?
I always make my own so that I can control the acid content – store-bought buttermilk can vary a little bit so I find I’m more comfortable with doing it myself. You can certainly try store-bought, though – I don’t think it would alter the finished product too much. Hope that helps!
For the milk in the frosting do you mean 2% milk?
I tend to use whatever milk I have on hand – usually skim or 1% milk, but use whatever you like! If the frosting is too thin, add a little more powdered sugar (or add a splash more milk if you’d like to thin it out).
Hi Jessie,
I love the cupcake, but the frosting was too sweet for me. I notice that a lot of butter cream frostings recipe calls for at least 3, and yours calls for 2, and it’s still too sweet for me. I tried only 1 cup of powdered sugar, which was the perfect sweetness, but it wasn’t thick enough to pope. Is there a way around this? I hate scraping off frostings. I want t o eat the whole thing. Maybe I’m not meant to love cupcakes, but they are so pretty. Help!?!?
Thanks a lot,
Donna
Whoops, to clarify, I meant 3 cups of powdered sugar. Also, not pope, but pipe.
Thanks for letting me know how they turned out! If you want to cut the sweetness a bit, I’m a fan of beating some whipping/heavy cream into the frosting (kind of like making whipped cream) – if you beat it long enough, it will still have a good piping consistency but won’t taste as sweet. Some people also like to use additional butter, but I usually find that makes the frosting a bit too rich for me, so I tend to go with the whipping cream option. Hope that helps!
I’d love to make these cupcakes, but live in a high-altitude state. Unfornately, high-altitude is not your friend when baking. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks so much!
I’m not very familiar with high-altitude baking, but this looks like a pretty good reference guide – it should be helpful!
Hi Jess,
I followed your directions exactly, but for some reason I only had enough batter for 12 cupcakes, and even then, the batter didn’t even rise above the liner. I was wondering what I did wrong/could do to fix this?
Sorry for the confusion! It’s hard to tell without being in the kitchen with you, but we may have different sized cupcake pans/liners, or your batter may not have risen properly, or I may have just counted wrong! I generally get almost two full 12-cupcake pans out of this recipe, but I’ll double check next time I make it to be sure 🙂
Hi what is one egg and one egg white?? Is it one whole egg (yolk and white) plus an additional egg white?
Yup – one whole egg plus one egg white!
Can we leave the lemon out ? If so , will that make cupcakes too sweet ? Should we reduce the amount of sugar in the cupcake then ?
You could leave out the lemon if you like, but if you’re just looking for a plain vanilla cupcake I’d recommend trying a recipe that’s specifically for lemon-free vanilla cupcakes. I generally recommend not messing too much with baking recipes, because small differences in ingredients can turn into a large difference for the finished product. If you do decide to try this recipe and omit the lemon, I’d recommend just following the rest of the directions as written. Hope that helps!
Hi Jess!
Would like to ask what do u mean by 1/2 cup butter (for frostings recipe), because back here in Malaysia, we measure by grams ounces etc.. not cup. Could u give me the measurement in grams (gm) for 1 cup butter? Thx!
1/2 butter weighs 113 grams. Hope that helps! Google is very helpful if you ever need to convert measurements – they have a handy conversion tool that pops up when you enter a query.
Hi. Can I use plain flour on this recipe?what’s the different between all purpose flour and plain flour?thanks
They’re one and the same!
What is the weight of a stick of butter? It’s difficult to know as in the UK all our ingredients are measured in pounds & ounces or kilos & gramms.
A stick of butter is 1/4 pound (110 grams). Hope that helps!