White Almond Cupcakes

TGIF! Who is excited that it's the weekend?! I am! Today I thought we could end the week on a sweet note. These cupcakes are awesome, you are definitely missing out if you have never tried them. I made them for a party with all my grad school peeps and they were a big hit. This recipe is adapted from here. The recipe for almond buttercream icing is at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients:
1 box White Cake Mix (in a later post, I will show you how to do this from scratch)
1 cup Flour
1 cup Sugar
3/4 tsp. Salt
1 1/3 cup Water
1 cup Sour Cream
2 Tbsp. Vegetable oil
1 tsp. Almond Extract
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
4 egg whites**

**The recipe calls for egg whites because the yolk of the egg would make the color of the cupcakes less white. If you don't care about color, go ahead and throw in the whole egg.

To start off, preheat your oven to 325° and combine your cake mix, flour, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Next add in your water, sour cream, vegetable oil, almond extract, vanilla extract, and eggs. Beat with an electric mixer on low for 4 minutes (this will make your mix fluffy!). Line your cupcake pans with baking cups (the recipe makes about 30 cupcakes). I usually spray my baking cups with non-stick cooking spray to make the cupcake come out easier but this isn't mandatory.

If you have never learned the cupcake pouring trick, I am here to rescue you. :) If you try and pour your batter directly into the pan you will spill batter everywhere. The trick is to use a cookie dough scoop, or some other type of spoon to spoon your batter into your baking cups. I have included a picture below of the two pans. The one on the left was poured from the bowl and the one on the right was done with a cookie dough scoop.

See how much better your pan looks with the scoop? Using the scoop technique, spoon your batter into your baking cups to almost full (your batter won't expand THAT much, see picture above). Bake your cupcakes for 25-30 minutes. You will know they are done when you insert a toothpick in the middle of one of them and it comes out clean. They will stay fairly white so don't expect them to brown to much. Here is the cupcake after baking:

These cupcakes are good by themselves but I'm a frosting girl and think the almond butter cream really tops these babies off. If you are going to frost them, make sure they are completely cool or your buttercream will melt.

Almond Buttercream Icing Ingredients:
1 stick Butter, softened (leave out for a couple hours or soften in microwave for 15 seconds)
4 cups Powdered Sugar
2-3 Tbsp. Milk
1 tsp. Almond Extract

Combine your butter and powdered sugar in a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until incorporated. Next, add in your milk 1 tbsp. at a time and mix. You want to add in enough to get the right consistency (thick for cupcakes, thinner for a cake) but be careful not to add to much. Finally, add in your almond extract and you are ready to frost!

You don't need a piping bag to frost your cupcakes, just use a zip lock bag and cut the tip off. See this tutorial for more instructions (toward to bottom). You can frost your cupcake in any way you want. I usually use a circular pattern. To make the circular pattern, start in the middle with a dot and then keep going around that dot until you reach the outside of the cupcake. If you don't want to mess with this, just put your frosting on with a knife. :) Here is a picture of your finished product:

Katniss thought they were so good, she passed out at the end of the party.

 

Happy Cooking

& Enjoy!