Yellow cupcakes

It's not every day that I get an American holiday off from work.  A day off where others have the day off, and make BBQs and have pool parties and general day-off fun shenanigans.  Sometimes I make it to the tail end of the festivities after my day of work.  But no, not this year!  This year the stars aligned, and not only did I get Labor Day off, I even got invited to B's friend's home and had a BBQ.

So what to do I do when I'm invited somewhere (just about anywhere?!)?  I bake.  And bake I did.  And it was exceptionally momentous because I christened my new Kitchen-Aid!!  It was sitting on the kitchen counter so lonely for over three months, since we got married, just begging to be used.  And today was it's lucky day!

I bought some super cute red, white, and blue star sprinkles for whatever treat I baked for our Labor Day BBQ, and I ultimately decided on cupcakes because, well, cupcakes are fun BBQ food, and I also haven't baked cupcakes in what seems like forever!  I was going to use my go-to yellow cake cupcake recipe but I couldn't, for the life of me, find my cake flour.  So I set off onto the internet to find a yellow cake recipe that didn't use cake flour.  I found it in the form of Brown Eyed Baker's yellow cake, which I turned into cupcakes.

One thing I'll say about these cupcakes is that they rise a lot, so filling them 2/3 of the way like I did with my first batch yielded cupcakes that overflowed a bit.  I filled them about 1/2 way for the second batch, and they didn't overflow.  I recommend filling them halfway -- with my first 18 cupcakes being filled 2/3 of the way and the rest being filled 1/2 way, I got 28 cupcakes.  My guess is you'll get closer to 33 to 3 dozen if you filled them all 1/2 way.

Yellow Cake Cupcakes
Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker, cupcake directions by me

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup buttermilk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F.
Line cupcake tin with cupcake liners.
Set aside

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Set aside.

Using an electric mixer or stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, beating for 1 minute between each addition.
Beat in vanilla extract.

Add the dry ingredients all at once.
Beat on low speed until just combined.
Add the buttermilk and beat on low for 1 minute.
Increase speed to medium and beat for 3 additional minutes.

Divide the batter evenly between prepared pans.  I recommend filling them halfway....more than that and mine overflowed.  You may need to bake them in two batches.
If filled 1/2 way, as recommended, bake for 16-18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center of the came comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.
Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes in the pans.
Remove, and place on wire racks.

Cool completely before icing.

Use the icing of your choice.  I went with this vanilla icing.  

Pipe icing onto cupcakes.
Top with sprinkles of your choice, if desired.