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It is freezing here in Ohio and I mean a bone chilling, teeth chattering, freezing…a whopping 12 degrees. The bad part is that it’s not even snowing, my theory is simple…if it’s going to be this cold, at least gimme a snow day, but unfortunately I have not gotten a single one this year! In the midst of this Ohio deep freeze, I was craving a little piece of summer and just happened to have some gorgeous oranges on my counter. I adapted a very simple recipe from the Joy of Baking, tweaking it just a bit to tantalize your taste buds with a lovely burst of orange. I then piped on some cream cheese frosting and enjoyed a little bit of summer! Bake these little beauties in bright cupcake liners, top them with sparkling sugar and I am betting that you will make the special people in your life very happy! Have a fabulous day and stay warm!
Notes:
Cupcake Recipe adapted from Joy of Baking;
Cream Cheese Frosting adapted from The Repressed Pastry Chef
Cupcake liners from World Market
Icing Tip from Bake It Pretty
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Orange Cupcakes
Ingredients
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup (130 grams) granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of pure orange extract
Zest of 1 orange (optional)
1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (60 ml) milk
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and lightly butter or line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
2. Place the sugar and orange zest into the bowl of your mixer and blend until moist and fragrant. Add in butter and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and orange extracts.
In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
3. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
4. Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18-20 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost with icing.
-Makes 12 cupcakes
Cream Cheese Frosting
(1) 8 ounce package of cream cheese; room temperature
2 tablespoon of butter; room temperature
1 tablespoon of shortening
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar; add more to reach desired consistency
Directions
1. Combine cream cheese, shortening and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix until smooth, creamy and well blended.
2. Blend in the vanilla extract.
3. Slowly add the confectioners’ sugar until you reach the desired consistency.
Hi Jamie,
I was wondering….some of your cupcake recipes call for cake flour and some for all purpose flour. Can you clarify why the difference? I would think that the cake flour would make them fluffier. Also, would beating the egg whites help to make them fluffier?
Thanks!
Kathy-
The use of cake flour will impart a more tender and fluffy cake. I have never beaten the egg whites separately before incorporating, so I cannot really say if thay will effect the final outcome. Thanks for stopping by.
-Jamie
Here in Finland we have -20 degrees right now, and too much snow, over 2meter !
Cupcakes looks delicious
we made these and i agree that they are a little dry and i followed the recipe perfectly and even left them in for a shorter period of time…. the icing would be nicer if it had more of an orange taste to it to compliment the batter.
Just made these (following the recipe) in my new Kitchen Aid mixer…and the cupcake turned out dry and tasted more like cornbread than cake. Not sure what went wrong…the only change I made was using tangerines for a more tart flavor and substituting a 1/4 cup of tangerine juice for most of the milk. Most recipes don’t call for 3 eggs, and maybe more sugar and less flour would help, too.
Hi Jamie, I came across your blog when I searched for an orange cupcake recipe. I made them last night and they were delicious! Though, they weren’t as orange as yours were, did you add food coloring?
I wanted to mention my modifications, I added white chocolate chips to the batter and in addition to icing the top of the cupcakes, I used the icing to fill the cakes when they cooled. I did this by increasing the amount of cream cheese by half and adding a little more butter and shortening, I found that I didn’t need to increase the conf. sugar.
They were like orange cremesicles and the typical reaction to them was “OMG, that’s even better than I was expecting!”
Thanks for the recipe!
The cake part turned out a little but dry. What can I do to fix that? But other than that they were really good. Loved the frosting!
Just made these; absolutely delicious! The texture is perfect; almost crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside. The smell was tantalizing when they were baking! My only change was replacing the orange extract with vanilla, as I’d run out – the orange flavour from the zest was enough though.
I also cheated a bit and added a tiny bit of food colouring to the frosting to make it orange, after adding in more zest as well – very pretty & tasty.
Oh wow, this looks gorgeous! I’ll be trying it this weekend! =D
Thank you for sharing the icing tip link. I love that effect.