My New Favorite Cupcakes: All-White Cupcakes

So in a moment of boredom and being back in my parents' spacious kitchen I decided to see what I could come up with using only the ingredients they had in the house at that moment. Which in all honesty, wasn't that difficult because I had most anything cake-related already in the house. So the point of inspiration was a spare bag of white chocolate chips leftover from some unknown cooking adventure.

I then looked in the fridge for essential things like butter, eggs, and milk only to find there was no butter in the house! So that was about as far as the "use only ingredients currently in the house" idea got.

After scrolling through a few cookbooks and blogs I decided on the perfect combination- white (like wedding white) cupcakes and white chocolate frosting.

 

So the hubby got sent on a grocery run for butter, and another spark of inspiration, berries! Raspberries and blueberries to be exact.  In the mean time here's what I worked on:

Betty Crocker's Silver White Cake - I think the silver name comes in because once the batter is mixed it is a little bit silvery.

Needs:
cake:
2 1/4 c all purpose flower or 2 1/2 c cake flower
1 2/3 c sugar
2/3 c shortening - which was nice, considering I didn't have butter when I started off this process.
1 1/4 c milk
3 1/2 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 t vanilla or almond extract ( I went for almond, as that's what you use in Angel Food cake and was imagining this recipe to be similar)
5 large egg whites (separating egg whites and yolks is actually kind of a fun activity now)

1 13x9" pan, or 2 9" round, or 3 8" round or 24 lined cupcake tins.

frosting:
1 c unsalted softened butter
2 1/2 c powdered sugar, with more on hand in case it's a little too runny
itty bitty bit of salt
6 oz. white chocolate - I used chocolate chips but really try to avoid them... they're miserable for this kind of thing.
1/4 c heavy whipping cream - but in all honesty i used 2% and slightly less than 1/4 c
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
your favorite berry to top it off! raspberry was the best for me!

Do [cake]:

• Heat oven to 350
• Grease and flour your baking pan, however if you're using cupcake tins skip this step as it's quite unnecessary
• Separate out the egg whites from the yolks. Refrigerate yolks for some later tasty adventure, Place whites on standby next to mixing bowl.
• Put flour, sugar, shortening, milk, baking powder, salt, vanilla (ie. all but the egg whites) into a mixing bowl and beat on low speed. I did mine with the sugar and shortening first so that they got well-incorporated, then baking powder/salt/extract/milk next and flour last considering these were supposed to be light and fluffy cupcakes and the harder you mix the flour in, the more dense the cake gets. Once everything is well-incorporated bump up the speed to medium/medium high for about a minute. Be sure to occasionally scrape the side of the bowl with a spatula.
• Add in egg whites and mix for 2 minutes on high speed. Be sure to occasionally scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
• Bake in cupcake tins for 20-22 mins. 8" for 23-28 mins, 9" for 30-35 mins, or 9x13" for 40-45 mins. Be sure to keep an eye on these, I set my timer for 22 mins and they were done in about 20. They're pretty light so they cooked quickly.

Do [frosting]:

• Chop up white chocolate into chip-sized chunks (oxymoron?). 
• Heat the chocolate in the microwave for 30 second increments, stirring between. Mine took about 1 minute but I probably should have gone for 1:15 because I had a few stray chunks that really made it torturous to pipe with a small tip. ALSO, don't try to be fancy and use a double boiler on the white chocolate. It won't work. I've tried about 4 times and it just gets too dang hot to melt so it seizes up.  
• Set chocolate aside and allow to cool
• Sift powdered sugar & salt into mixing bowl over the softened butter.
• Beat sugar/butter mixture until light and fluffy, so start off slow so you don't end up covered in powdered sugar and end up at high/med-high for about 3 mins.
• Measure out cream/milk, add vanilla extract into measuring cup
• Turn down to low speed, gradually pour in milk/cream mixture to butter and sugar.
• Add in cooler melted chocolate mixture, stir until just incorporated
• Beat on med-high for about 2 or 3 minutes.
• Pour into frosting/piping bag if you choose to go that route. However, be warned: do not scrape the sides of the bowl to get extra frosting as some of the chocolate may solidify on the sides of the bowl, and you will end up with solid chocolate chunks clogging the bag.
• Pipe onto cake/cupcakes, add berry of choice and enjoy!

And here's the pictures. Crappy cell phone does not even do these justice. They were so tasty I would have hired a professional if I'd thought about it. They really were that good.



Also- unintentional July 4th theme. Go me?