Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

I love cake. I know I've mentioned that a few times before, but seriously... cake is the ultimate tongue pleaser. It's moist (if you're lucky), it's sweet, and it's topped off with an even sweeter, creamy topping.

Now, as much as I love cake, I'm not a huge cupcake fan. For a couple of reasons... mainly, I find cupcakes hard to eat. I could probably fix this problem, by breaking out a plate and a fork, but it's cupcake... it's supposed to be portable, right?? I'm supposed to be able to pick it up and chow into it. And that's exactly what I do. And I wind up with frosting all over my face, chin, and down the front of my shirt. Brilliant. I also find cupcakes to usually be duller than their big cake counterparts. They are usually drier and there isn't that nice center layer of icing that permeates into the cake layers... thats my favorite part of the cake, the parts around the center layer of icing. Yum.

But, since I don't have a cavalry of kids (yet) or co-workers to dole out slices of cake to, the cupcake is a good option for me to test out cake recipes and icing recipes. So, in the coming weeks, I plan to teach myself about the different types of frostings out there.

Friday night was my first venture. I decided to go for a very basic cupcake recipe and then try multiple types of frosting to go with it. The recipe I chose was Amy Sedaris' Vanilla Cupcakes. I love Amy Sedaris, too, so it was fun to test one of her recipes!

When the cupcakes first came out of the oven, they were terrible! Seriously, they tasted like crap (I snuck some crumbs off one of the cupcakes) and I was so disappointed. But, after they completely cooled (till the next day) they turned out to be really delicious. A really excellent vanilla cupcake.

I went ahead and first tried the icing with the cupcake recipe. It's basically a vanilla icing made of powdered sugar, half and half and vanilla and I was not a fan. Too sweet, too grainy, not creamy enough. Luckily, I only made enough for 2 cupcakes, so the rest of my cupcakes sit in my kitchen awaiting further frosting experimentation. Yay!