White Chocolate Cupcakes

These have a delicious vanilla flavor but even more importantly, a light texture that can be difficult to attain from scratch. They are an excellent base for vanilla, chocolate, or maraschino cherry frosting! Based on Fluffy White Chocolate Cupcakes from ScientificallySweet.com.

Ingredients

  • 38g unsalted butter softened
  • 8ml light olive oil
  • 75g granulated sugar
  • 1 egg (50g)
  • 28g white chocolate melted
  • ¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
  • 90g all-purpose flour
  • ⅜ teaspoon baking powder
  • ⅛ teaspoon baking soda
  • ⅛ teaspoon salt
  • 60ml milk

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a 6-cup muffin pan with paper liners.
  2. Make the cupcake batter: combine soft butter, sugar, and oil in a small mixing bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer on medium-high speed for 2-3 minutes until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time until smooth and evenly incorporated.
  3. Add slightly cooled, melted white chocolate and vanilla and mix it in until evenly combined.
  4. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl and whisk to blend evenly. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low. Gradually add the milk and mix gently until combined, then increase mixer speed to medium-high and beat for 5 seconds just to emulsify the batter.
  5. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling them not more than ¾ full. Bake for 16-18 minutes.

Notes

6 April 2024: I made a half-batch of this recipe today (quantities for the half-batch are listed above, since I rarely make a full dozen cupcakes). Instead of using King Arthur all-purpose flour as I do for many items, I used Gold Medal this time. I think it lends a more tender texture to baked goods like biscuits and cupcakes. Using all of the batter, I made 6 cupcakes of 55g each, but they were just a bit too large and I got slight muffin tops - next time I may reduce the amount to 50g per cupcake. I baked them in a relatively dark 12-cup muffin pan on rack 2 for 17 minutes, rotating the pan after 16 minutes. Perfect bake (although less than the 18-20 minutes called for in the original recipe, which would have been far too long for me).