These classic yellow cupcakes are perfectly moist, buttery, and vanilla-forward. To make them even better, they’re frosted with simple but delicious chocolate buttercream frosting. Truly a great cupcake for any time of the year!

Is There Anything Better Than A Classic Cupcake?

Cupcakes are hands down my favorite things to bake, but sometimes I push myself a little too hard to come up with unique flavors or fun frosting+cake combinations. As a recipe developer, this type of work is tons of fun but sometimes I just want to bring it back to basics. Like, yes I want to infuse my cakes with flowers and the rare spices of the world but also vanilla cake is one of my favorite things in the world so….let’s do both?

Hence: classic yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

These classic cupcakes are so moist, tender, and buttery. The chocolate frosting on top is also just so luscious and is the perfect complement to the cake. Normally I’m a vanilla frosting type of person (which is ironic given how many chocolate cupcake recipes I’ve shared the past few months), but with yellow cake, it’s chocolate frosting every time.

Here’s why I think you’ll love these yellow cupcakes:

• They are super moist, tender and vanilla-forward: I add a spoonful of cornstarch to the batter to help make these cupcakes extra tender. A generous of vanilla also makes your kitchen smell amazing while these bake.
• They require simple ingredients: most of the ingredients for these cupcakes are probably already in your pantry! Flour, eggs, butter, sugar and the like.
• They’re perfect for any season or occasion: when in doubt, making these cupcakes will be a hit year-round.

What is Yellow Cake?

So what is a yellow cake? How is yellow cake different from vanilla cake? What is white cake?

All very great and valid questions.

In short, yellow cake is a vanilla cake that uses whole eggs in the batter. White cake is a vanilla cake that uses only egg whites in the batter. Both of them are considered vanilla cakes. Therefore, you can think of these cupcakes as vanilla cupcakes–but with whole eggs. The yolk in the eggs is what gives these that classic yellow tint.

If you’re looking for white cake, I highly recommend you check out these wonderful cupcakes!

What You’ll Need

Equipment

• This recipe makes 12 standard sized cupcakes. You’ll need a 12-cup cupcake pan as well as liners.
• A stand mixer with the paddle attachment, though a hand mixer works as well
• A medium mixing bowl
• Microwave safe bowls and plates

Ingredients For Yellow Vanilla Cupcakes

• All-purpose flour
• Cornstarch: adding this helps keep the cake super light and tender
• Baking powder
• Fine sea salt
• Unsalted butter: soften it to room temperature
• Granulated cane sugar
• 2 large eggs: make sure they are at room temperature. In a pinch, you can soak them in a bowl of very warm water for 5-10 minutes.
• Vanilla extract: use a high quality, pure vanilla extract for the best flavor.
• Buttermilk: shaken and at room temperature

Ingredients for Chocolate Frosting

• Unsalted butter: get it very soft–even a little bit melted is okay, as long as it’s 90% solid.
• Powdered sugar
• Unsweetened cocoa powder
• Vanilla extract
• Salt
• Milk, of any kind

How-To Guide

Here is how to make the vanilla cupcakes

1. Start by pre-heating your oven to 350 degrees F and lining a cupcake pan.
2. Whisk flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Make sure to thoroughly whisk all these ingredients together. This is especially important to spread out the cornstarch, which is what helps give these cupcakes such an amazing, tender texture.
3. In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy. This will take around 3-4 minutes, depending on how fast you’re running the mixer. Then beat in the vanilla and eggs, one at a time, making sure to fully combine between each addition. You may find it helpful here to pause and scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally to help everything blend together. In the end, you should have a creamy, yellow mixture.
4. Heat the buttermilk in the microwave to bring it to room temperature.
5. Alternate between adding half of the flour mixture, all of the buttermilk, and then the remaining flour mixture into your mixer. Beat on medium-low until the flour is just combined.
6. Divide the batter between your cupcake liners and bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean

And here is how to make the chocolate frosting

1. Make sure your butter is very, very soft. From experience, this helps give the frosting the best consistency. I like to cut the butter into slices, spread them in a single layer on a plate, and microwave for 12-20 seconds. A little bit of melted butter is okay, just make sure it’s not too melted.
2. Beat the butter, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt together in a mixer. Start on low speed so that sugar doesn’t go flying everywhere, and then gradually increase the speed.
3. As you increase the speed, add one tablespoon of milk at a time, beating each in fully.
4. Continue beating the frosting on medium-high speed, until it is very light and fluffy. Pause to scrape down the sides of the bowl if needed. You can also add more milk to get a thinner consistency! Too thick of frosting will be very difficult to pipe (I learned this the hard way).
5. Frost the cupcakes! I used Wilton’s 1M tip.

Tips & Q&A

Use Room Temperature Ingredients: It is important that you bring any ingredients that are usually stored in the fridge up to room temperature before using. Cold ingredients will cause the fat in the batter to curdle, which leads to a dense and poorly-risen cake. That’s why in the recipe we quickly microwave the buttermilk to ensure that it’s not going to freeze your poor batter.

Do Not Over-mix the Batter: Mix the flour into your wet ingredients until it is just combined, and not too much more. Over-mixing leads to more gluten build-up in the batter, which results in tough and gummy rather than light and fluffy cupcakes. Great for bread, but not so much for cakes!

Use Quality Vanilla: since these are yellow vanilla cupcakes, the vanilla flavor is one of the main attractions in this recipe. As as result, high quality vanilla will lead to better tasting cupcakes! Have no fear, any vanilla you have will work, but good vanilla does make a difference. I love Nielsen Massey or Rodelle! Pricey, but 100% worth it if you love to bake. 🙂

Can I Substitute Out Buttermilk? Yes you can! If you don’t have buttermilk handy, there are two options I would recommend as substitutes. 1) Whisk together equal parts Greek yogurt and milk to make a proxi-buttermilk. 2) Add a tsp of lemon juice to one cup of milk and let it sit and curdle for 10 minutes.

How do I Store These Cupcakes? Store these cupcakes in an airtight container on the counter for 3-4 days. Unfrosted cupcakes can also be wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months.

What Sprinkles Did You Use To Decorate? For the cupcakes pictured in this post, I used Cake Mate’s Unicorn Sprinkles. They’re so fun–lots of pearls, stars, and fun colors.

Did You Make This Recipe?

If so, I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a rating and/or comment to spread the love and help others find this recipe (shameless SEO plug).

Also feel free take a picture and share it with me on  Instagram @toppedwithhoney. Looking forward to seeing your amazing yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

If you’re not ready to bake yet, no problem! Simply hover over any image in this post (pick your favorite), or tap if you’re on mobile, and click the pin icon in the corner to save for later.

Have fun baking and check out some other cupcake recipes here! 

Yellow Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting