Basic Cupcake Recipes
There are several cupcake recipes that I base my creations off of. Honestly, I couldn't list all of my personal recipes, because most of them I sort of make up as I go along, without writing anything down. So here is a link collection of standard, easy but delicious cupcake recipes from several great sites:
- For chocolate lovers: Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cupcake Recipe
- For basic vanilla fans: Perfect Vanilla Cupcake's Recipe from Natasha's Kitchen
- For something more tangy: Lemon Cream Cupcakes from Taste of Home
- For the best carrot cupcakes: Martha Stewart's Carrot Cupcake Recipe
- For perfect red velvet cupcakes: Brown Eyed Baker's Red Velvet Cupcakes
Basic Icing Recipes
I find the best way to make icing, is to figure out your own recipe that achieves your desired flavour. For me, this typically involves some combination of these four key ingredients: butter, icing sugar, cream cheese and flavoured extract/sauce/jam. Between these four ingredients, you can't really go wrong! However, if you are looking for something more structured I highly recommend checking out some of these icing recipes, from a few of my favourite baking sites:
- For the perfect chocolate flavour: Brown Eyed Baker's Best Chocolate Buttercream
- For something simple: Savory Sweet Life's Classic Vanilla Buttercream
- For creamy caramel flavour: Chow's Salted Caramel Frosting
- For the best cream cheese frosting: Martha Stewart's Cream Cheese Frosting
- For something different: Add a Pinch's Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
- For a sweet lemon taste: The Kitchen Magpie's Lemon Buttercream Icing
A Few Fun Extras
In addition to the standard cupcake and icing combination, I like to throw on some sort of glaze, sauce or filling. Here are some of my favourites:
- For the ultimate indulgence: Martha Stewart's Chocolate Genache Filining
- For the perfect drizzle: Brown Eyed Baker's Salted Caramel Sauce
- For something surprising: Martha Stewart's Strawberry Cream-Cheese Filling
Pictured below are cupcakes with the chocolate genache filling. To add the filling, simple spoon out a little bit of the cupcake (once it's cooled), being sure not to dig all the way to the bottom, scoop on some genache, then ice as normal.