These easy, fluffy Vanilla Bean Cupcakes are topped with a swirl of chocolate peanut butter American Buttercream and finished with a healthy dose of sprinkles. Mix and match your cupcake and buttercream recipes to make your own cupcake and frosting combinations.
Hi hi! Sneaking in here with just one more Valentine’s recipe for you - although I would absolutely make these year round, I just wanted an excuse to use these super pretty sprinkles! These Vanilla Bean Cupcakes are super simple, and extra delicious topped with a big swirl of chocolate peanut butter buttercream.
I actually don’t have a lot of cupcake recipes on the blog, which is weird because I love making them, and I love eating them! They are, to me, the perfect ratio of cake to buttercream, and I love piping buttercream and sprinkling sprinkles. Best combination of all of the fun things.
The cupcakes are my go-to vanilla cake, which is made using the reverse creaming method, which yields a finer crumb and a flatter top on the cake, making it perfect for cupcakes. As opposed to whipping lots of air into the cake through creaming butter and sugar, which creates pockets within the mixture, reverse creaming coats the flour with the fat, meaning that the flour is less hydrated, giving you a more tender crumb. The recipe comes together super, super easily, and is one of my favourites.
I topped these with a simple buttercream - a chocolate peanut butter American buttercream. I don’t often make an american buttercream, but the combination of peanut butter and cocoa powder works perfectly with the nostalgic flavour of the buttercream. American buttercream is much more simple method wise to make than a meringue or pastry cream based recipe, and I make mine slightly differently by really upping the ratio of heavy cream in the buttercream and whipping it hard, (lolololol) which gives a super light and fluffy buttercream which pipes like a dream. I went for the standard big swirl of buttercream on top of these, but you could also decorate them with an offset spatula or a different piping tip.
A few wee tips:
- I use vanilla bean paste in all of my baking. Vanilla extract works well too but paste is just the best. I always always use Heilala, who are an amazing company doing incredible things. You can purchase their products here - use the code CLOUDY20 for 20% off.
- If you like, you can make the cupcakes ahead of time - I made them the day before and stored them in an airtight container at room temperature.
- Mix and match these with any buttercream that you like! There’s a whole bunch on the site - this is a great way to use up any extra buttercream that you may have around.
- I used these sprinkles!
- My cupcake liners were a little short so my cupcakes got a bit of a tan line - don’t be like me and buy higher liners so this doesn’t happen to you too.
Made this recipe and love it?
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A note on salt and oven temperature
It is important to note the type of salt that is called for in a recipe. I use Diamond Crystal salt throughout my recipes - if you use a different sort of kosher salt or regular table salt you will need to adjust accordingly as some salt is 'saltier' than others. Morton's salt is twice as salty, so you will need half the quantity. Same goes for a regular table salt. I am working to get gram measurements throughout my recipes for salt but still getting there.
All oven temperatures are conventional unless otherwise stated. If you are baking on fan / convection, you will need to adjust the temperature. An oven thermometer is a great investment to ensure that your oven is the correct temperature.
Using the double / triple function in the recipe card
You will notice that there is a '1X' '2X' '3X' button in my recipe card. This can be used for doubling or tripling a recipe. However, please note that this only doubles the ingredient quantities in the ingredients list and NOT in the method. If there are quantities or pan sizes in the method of the recipe (for example weigh out 150g brown butter), you will need to scale this number manually. It will also not change the baking time in the recipe so you will need to adjust this yourself too. It is always a good idea to read through a recipe fully before doubling it just to check this. If you would like to scale this recipe or convert for another pan size, use my calculator!
Tools and equipment
For a list of my go-to tools and equipment, I have a post you can refer to here.
Why is this recipe in grams?
I post my recipes in grams as it is the most accurate way to bake. Cups are not only inaccurate but they vary in volume worldwide. There is no way for me to provide one cup measure that works for everyone. However, posting in weight fixes this issue. If you would like the recipe in cups you are welcome to convert it yourself via google, but please do not ask me to do it for you as I am not comfortable providing a recipe using a method that I have not tested. Baking with a scale is easy, accurate, and also makes cleanup super simple. Here is the scale that I use if you would like a recommendation! Here's to accurate baking!
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Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with Chocolate Peanut Butter Buttercream
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes plus cooling time
- Yield: 12-14 Cupcakes 1x
Description
These easy, fluffy Vanilla Bean Cupcakes are topped with a swirl of chocolate peanut butter American Buttercream and finished with a healthy dose of sprinkles. Mix and match your cupcake and buttercream recipes to make your own cupcake and frosting combinations.
Ingredients
Vanilla Bean Cupcakes
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 1tsp vanilla bean paste
- 165g whole milk
- 60g full fat greek yoghurt or sour cream
- 300g all-purpose flour
- 225g sugar
- 1 ¾ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 175g unsalted butter, at room temperature
Chocolate Peanut Butter Buttercream
- 265g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 230g smooth peanut butter
- 80g dutch process cocoa powder
- 540g powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
- ¾ tsp salt
- 105g heavy cream, plus more as needed
- Sprinkles to finish - I used this blend
Instructions
VANILLA BEAN CUPCAKES
- Preheat the oven to 350°f / 180°c. Line 1-2 muffin pans with paper cupcake liners (I ended up with 14 cupcakes)
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, milk, and yoghurt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mix briefly to combine.
- With the mixer on low, add the butter a cube at a time, until fully incorporated and the mixture looks like wet sand.
- Add half of the wet ingredients into the mixer. Mix until just combined, then add the second half of the wet ingredients. Mix on medium speed until just combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer and give a few folds with a rubber spatula to ensure that no dry ingredients remain.
- Fill each cupcake liner with about ¼ cup of batter - you want them about ¾ full.
- Bake the cupcakes for 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly golden brown and the top springs back when pressed. A toothpick inserted into the middle of the cupcake should come out with no crumbs attached.
- Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes in their pans, then transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.
CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER BUTTERCREAM
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, peanut butter, and cocoa powder on medium speed until well combined. Add the powdered sugar, vanilla bean paste, and salt, and mix to combine.
- Add the heavy cream and mix until incorporated, then increase the speed and whip until fluffy. Decrease the speed to low and mix for a few minutes to remove any air bubbles.
- Transfer the buttercream to a piping bag fitted with a closed star tip (I used an ateco #846).
ASSEMBLY
- Pipe a spiral of buttercream onto the top of each cupcake, and top with sprinkles. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Keywords: vanilla bean, cupcake, peanut butter, chocolate, american buttercream
Comments
This recipe is amazing! The cupcakes are light and fluffy and oh so soft. They also aren’t too sweet which is great for it to then balance out with the sweet buttercream icing.
I only had crunchy peanut butter in the house but the icing tastes like Reece’s pieces and adds the necessary sweetness to the cupcake. Can’t speak highly enough of this as a great base for cupcakes as well. I added jimmies to mine for a pop of colour as well.
Thank you so much for sharing!
★★★★★
Ahhh so happy you loved them! I bet the crunchy was so good in there too!
Such an easy recipe but tastes a thousand times better than most cupcake recipes I've tried! Yum yum, thanks!
★★★★★
This is a very delicious recipe, I made a vanilla raspberry icing and it was perfect. I was a bit confused as I’ve never made anything with this method, most recipes start with creaming butter and sugar m. But they came out perfect, this will be a staple recipe for me from now on.
★★★★★
so happy you love! It's a weird technique right, but it works so well!
Wow!! I have been making cupcakes for years (creaming butter and sugar together first etc) with good results. But I trust your recipes so much that I thought try something new and these were incredible! We even ate half the batch without any icing because they were so good! Super delicious! Thank you so much for the hard work and time!
★★★★★
Can you provide a link to where you got these sprinkles? They are so cute!
I made these a long time ago sorry so i'm not sure if the sprinkles are still around but I got them from sprinkle pop - they have a bunch of cute mixes!