I always have a hard time denying my daughter when she wants to cook, probably because I have developed such a love for cooking with this recipe blog. So last week when she asked if we could make cupcakes, it only took a moment’s consideration to agree. But you know I can’t just make any old cupcakes. We made cupcakes from the Oscar’s $100 Cake recipe.

First she put in the cupcake liners

My helper was very serious about this project – and I just realized she’s wearing the same shirt as in the last project, lol. Of course, she had a stake in the results. She is getting very good at pouring ingredients into the mixing bowl. When we first started making cookies together, we had as much flour on the counter as in the bowl sometimes.

Who needs a fancy sifter?

The Oscar’s recipe is very easy, plus there’s no eggs, so when little girls want to lick the beaters, Mommy doesn’t feel guilty telling her no. Plus, if someone had an egg free mayonnaise, this could be a completely egg free cake or cupcake for people who are allergic.

Since we couldn’t just eat the batter straight out of the bowl, we filled the cupcake liners 2/3 full and put them in to bake. I preheated the oven to 350 and started checking them at 10 minutes (not even close). After about 22 minutes, they were nicely rounded and the toothpick came out clean as a whistle.

Still too hot to eat but oh, yummy looking

Finally, I looked up a buttercream frosting recipe in the Good Housekeeping cookbook my mother gave me years ago. We made a basic chocolate buttercream as follows:

Basic Buttercream

1 lb confectioners sugar
6 tbsp butter, softened
3 tbsp milk or 1/2 & 1/2
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Beat all ingredients until smooth, add more milk if necessary until consistency is spreadable.

For chocolate icing:

Increase butter to 1/2 cup; melt 3 squares Baker’s chocolate, cool; add with 2 egg yolks to the above.

I'd say they were a success!

We only made a dozen, so there was quite a lot of frosting left over. The cake was moist and rich, but not heavy. The frosting hardened overnight so that it wasn’t sticky the next day, but it was still soft and creamy. The daycare kids all at the tops of the cupcakes and left the bottoms. :-)