cupcakes &desserts &frosting 17 Feb 2009 06:07 pm
White Velvet Cupcakes with Mascarpone Frosting
My friend Darlene has been going on a lot of caketastings for her wedding. I even made her a notepad to help her along in her selection process – however when she happened upon a white velvet cupcake, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It sounded like it’d be delicious. So I altered my red velvet recipe and changed some measurements and came up with a darn good tasting cupcake. Most red velvet’s call for a flour or a cream cheese frosting – no way. So I put together a little mascarpone frosting to go with it. It paired itself pretty nicely…
cupcake ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1-1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk (read on to find out how to make your own)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 TB white vinegar
mascarpone frosting ingredients:
16 ounces mascarpone cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.
Sift the flour and salt together and set aside. If I don’t have buttermilk on hand, I simply make my own by combining just under a 1/2 cup of milk with 3 teaspoons of lemon juice. Once you’ve done that, set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. On low, slowly alternate the flour with the buttermilk beginning and ending with the flour.
Now dissolve the baking soda in the vinegar. Sounds weird but trust me on this. Carefully stir it into the batter. You will get a lovely velvet-y batter. Pour into prepped cupcake pans, about 1/2 full.
Bake for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool on wire racks and start your frosting…
To make the frosting, in a medium bowl combine mascarpone cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir together until smooth, and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form – don’t overdo it, the last thing you want is for it to curdle. Then fold the whipped cream, into the mascarpone mixture until combined. If you get it just right, you will get a nice sweet fluffy frosting.
I decorated these with edible pearls – the kids LOVED this cupcake and I think they will be asking for it again soon.
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on 26 Feb 2009 at 10:48 pm 1.Tammy Nguyen said …
I HEART red velevet cupcakes. How does this compare? Can you taste the diff if you make your own buttermilk?
Marscapone frosting…that is very interesting. How does this differ from cream cheese?
on 07 Mar 2009 at 8:45 pm 2.jim said …
i think you dropped the unit on the milk/cream for the frosting. i had no luck using half-and-half, but whipping cream seemed to have worked just fine.
the cupcakes came out a little delicate for my tastes. it would have helped if i hadn’t overfilled so many, and had to fight them out of the pan. or let them set in the pan a bit longer before trying to remove them. but i had more batter and only one cupcake pan….
on 28 May 2009 at 1:28 pm 3.Kt said …
Hmm – was this supposed to have made 2 dozen because I had to fill mine way over 1/2 full and they collapsed while baking. I must’ve done something wrong!
on 28 May 2009 at 4:09 pm 4.justJENN said …
@Kt Hm, collapsed? You had the temp at 325 for 20-25 mins? The only thing is perhaps the oven temperature?
on 01 Jun 2009 at 4:08 pm 5.Kt said …
It definitely was set at 325. I checked them at about 13 minutes to see what they were looking like because my oven normally cooks things more quickly and they were already all collapsed. I’ll have to give them another try. Either I filled them too much or maybe my baking soda has lost it’s oomph!
on 23 May 2010 at 6:32 pm 6.Sarah said …
Jenn, I have to say THANK YOU! I used this recipe, along with the champagne buttercream for my parents’ anniversary dinner last night. They were a hit. And they came out literally perfect.
I have a brief post with some pictures on my blog (linked here), and all the pictures of of my process baking these cupcakes here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahschmidt/sets/72157624119333652/
This is now my new base cupcake recipe!
on 11 Aug 2010 at 7:38 pm 7.Alexa said …
Hi, this looks like an amazing recipe, exactly what I want
I just have one question, I have all the ingredients, however, I wanted to know how much the icing makes? I wanted to make around 24-36 cupcakes, I have 8 ounces but will go and get more. thankyou.
on 11 Aug 2010 at 11:19 pm 8.justJENN said …
@Alexa
For that many cupcakes, I’d DOUBLE it.
on 12 Aug 2010 at 2:54 pm 9.Alexa said …
Double your recipe? D;
on 12 Aug 2010 at 5:27 pm 10.justJENN said …
@Alexa
Yes, double the frosting recipe.