Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes & Snickerdoodles (Tina & Lena's Birthday)

We celebrated Tina's early birthday and Lena's belated birthday with Cupcakes and snickerdoodles baking at midnight. I had to wait for my little ones to go to bed first and then join them in baking. We had such a fun day filled with activities and there's not a better to end the day than to bake and eat fresh baked cupcakes right before bedtime. We were singing birthday songs and blowing out candles while the werewolves were coming out at night. How crazy! These kids really had the energy of an energizer bunny. Just kept going and going and never seem to run of battery. As tired as I was that day, it was so much fun spending some quality time with family. The girls enjoyed baking and were very hands on. They measured out the ingredients, mixed everything and even decorated the cupcakes. They did such a wonderful job. I love how the cupcakes look so enticing. It really was yummilicious. You should have been there to try one.




Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcakes from the Food Network website:

Ingredients
Cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing:
Vanilla Buttercream, recipe follows
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Line 2 (1/2 cup-12 capacity) muffin tins with cupcake papers.

In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Marshmallow Frosting: (can't remember where I found this recipe but it was from the internet)

1 TBSP milk
3 TBSP sugar
1/2 bag of marshmallow (~6 oz)
1 TBSP boiling Water
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

In a iny sauce pan on very low heat, warm the milk and sugar. Make sure it doesn't boil over, just want to heat it up.

In a double boiler, melt the marshmallows. When they start to soften, add the boiling water and stir.

Remove from the heat. In your mixer bowl pour the melted marshmallow in as well as the vanilla and beat. Beat in the melted milk/sugar until cooled.

Use an offset spatula to frost. This is very very sticky.

P.S. we only needed about 1/2 the frosting we made.