Ingredients for 12 cupcakes:

• 4 oz. butter, preferably unsalted
• 10 oz. icing sugar

Method:

Take the butter out of the fridge, put it in a bowl and let it melt at room temperature until it becomes soft. Then cream the butter by steering it with a wooden spoon. This should take you about 5 minutes. In a separate bowl, sift the icing sugar, then start adding it to the cream butter, one spoon at a time, mixing continuously. It’s strongly advisable to sift the icing sugar, not necessarily because of the impurities it may contain, but because it usually forms lumps which would be very difficult to get rid of, once you mix the sugar in the butter cream. Sifting will help you obtain a fine buttercream icing for your cupcakes. Another useful tip for the perfect homemade buttercream: don’t mix it too much, especially if you decide to use a kitchen mixer instead of the wooden spoon, because it would lead to air bubbles formation inside the mixture. These bubbles are a real pain and they would spoil the effect of your cupcakes icing.

Optionally, you can add a few drops of food coloring and flavors such as vanilla extract or almond extract. Colored extracts would change the color of the frosting, so you need to buy clear extracts if you want to prevent that. Please be aware that the color of this buttercream icing is not pure white, because the butter itself is not white. If you need a perfectly white frosting, then you should replace the butter with shortening, but that’s already another cupcake icing recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound cream cheese
• 1/2 pound whipped cream
• 1/4 pound white chocolate
• Food coloring (optional, if you don’t want the frosting to be white)

These quantities should be enough for at least one dozen cupcakes, but if you spread it thin, it can be enough for two dozens. It usually depends on how thick you like the frosting to be, so what works for me may not be the same for you. Anyway, after you try the homemade frosting once, you’ll know how many cupcakes you can decorate with such and such quantities.

Method:

In a bowl, mix the cream cheese with the whipped cream. Melt the white chocolate (steaming is my favorite method). Add the melted chocolate to the mix, blend everything well and you’re done. The cream cheese frosting goes very well with fresh fruit and gelatin toppings, for creating refreshing and original cupcake recipes.

The cupcake frosting for this kind of toppers can be either white, cream or some other pale color. Dark colors may not be such a great idea, so it’s better perhaps to avoid them. There are no special cupcake recipes for baby shower. Any cupcake batter will do, so you can take any recipe you like and instead of its common icing use the themed decorations.

What Are Cupcakes and Why Are They Popular?

But what is a cupcake and what makes it so special? If were to look at a classical definition, a cupcake is a small cake baked in a muffin tin or in an individual pottery cup, ramekin or baking cup, yielding one serving, which can be eaten using solely the hands. Most cupcake recipes call for frosting, sprinkles or other decorations, but there are also versions of plain cupcakes. In the UK and Ireland, cupcakes are known as fairy cakes. Cupcakes can be served at tea time, at parties or any time you crave for something sweet.
Like muffins, cupcakes have been around for decades. It’s not clear whether muffins are cupcakes without frosting or cupcakes are sweet muffins with a frosting decoration, but they managed to stay popular because of a few simple facts:

1. Cupcakes are fun: you don’t have to be a child to love those cute little sweets with colorful icing and mouth watering sprinkles on top. If adults like them, it’s easy to imagine that children love them. Ask a child to help you bake some fancy cupcakes and you’ve got her in the kitchen for life.
2. No tools are needed to eat a cupcake. This makes them the ideal dessert for parties, as you eliminate dishwashing or buying disposable plates and spoons which look and feel so cheap. Cupcakes are baked in special paper liners, so your guests won’t even get their hands dirty when enjoying their dessert. Lately, there is a growing trend of serving cupcakes at weddings, instead of a wedding cake. In this case, the cupcakes would be arranged on a stand in order to form a cupcake tower, resembling the traditional wedding cake.
3. Small portions help controlling the intake of calories and of various nutrients, especially if you bake the cupcakes at home, so you can control what ingredients go inside them. You may say there’s no difference between eating ten cupcakes and eating ten pieces cut from a big cake. Indeed, there’s no difference, but psychologically, you’d stop when seeing those cupcake liners piling in front of you. Well, at least some of us would stop.

Got Cupcake Recipes?

Send us your best cupcake recipe with a photo and we are going to publish it in our special Guest Cupcake Bakers section, giving you full credit for it. It’s another chance for you to prove your skills and to meet like-minded, cupcake loving people. All of you are welcome to give your feedback and to rate cupcake recipes submitted by other readers. Based on the number of votes, we are going to award The Best Cupcake Recipe of the Month, which will come with a prize (which for now is a surprise).