Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Frosting

I love baking cupcakes.  Anytime I can find an excuse to make them, I usually do.  This weekend I made some cupcakes for my brother-in-law because he's celebrating his 24th birthday this week, Saturday actually - Happy Birthday Kevbro!

His favorite cake is yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  His mom usually makes this for him every year, but this year I offered to make cupcakes.  I knew instantly I wanted to make his favorite - yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I already had frosting made from the Chocolate Chip Cupcakes I made last week, so I was good there.  All I needed to do was buy some buttermilk for the cake batter.

This yellow buttermilk cake batter is pretty good and would pair nicely with any frosting - chocolate, fluffy vanilla, maybe a caramel swiss meringue buttercream or a white chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.  It's the perfect base.  I would also be a good cake batter for decorative cupcakes.

If you try these let me know what you think! Happy cupcake baking!

Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes

Martha Stewart Cupcakes Cookbook (pg. 26)

Makes 36

3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 1/4 cups sugar

5 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks, room temperature

2 cups buttermilk, room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Dark Chocolate Frosting (recipe in this post)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.  Sift together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Reduce speed to medium.  Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.  Add yolks, and beat until thoroughly combined.  Reduce speed to low.  Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each.  Beat in vanilla.

3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full.  Bake, rotating tins halfway through (this is only if you are baking two 12 cup tins at once, if you are only baking one tin, then you don't need to rotate), until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched and a cake tester (aka a toothpick) inserted into the centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.  Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely.  Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.

4. To finish, use a small offset spatula to spread cupcakes with frosting.  Refrigerate up to 3 days in airtight containers; bring to room temperature and, if desired, decorate with sprinkles before serving.