Hummingbird Bakery Cupcakes

I make cupcakes fairly often, but nearly always following the recipes from the Magnolia Bakery in New York.  Their recipes for both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes produce a beautifully dense sponge which is very popular in this house, but they are quite time consuming to make, and even more so when, like me, you don't have an electric mixer.  Cupcakes were requested last week, but finding myself very short of time owing to job-hunting and interviews, and with only one egg in the fridge, I had to have a rethink.  I remembered a recipe for vanilla cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook I'd copied down from the internet a while back.  The Hummingbird Bakery claims to be the destination in London for American-style cupcakes, so I was intrigued to find out how they would compare with the Magnolia Bakery recipe. 

The recipe is quite unusual, in that very little butter is used but it includes quite a lot of milk, making for a very liquid batter.  It was very quick to put together and the only problem I had was that the recipe claims to make 12 - I managed 10 but could have filled the cases higher in which case I think it would have been more like 8.   After baking for 20 minutes they were cooked through, the only notable difference from another recipe being that the rise was very flat.  Upon tasting, the sponge is incredibly light, much more so than the Magnolia Bakery recipe, and quite crumbly.  When topped with buttercream and dolly mixtures, it was felt that although a good texture, the sponge was almost too light, and so overwhelmed by the buttercream.  Perhaps they would be better topped with glace icing, but this would rather defeat the object of an  'American cupcake'!  An interesting recipe, and certainly one to consider, but for now at least, the Magnolia Bakery cupcakes remain firm favourites. 

Hummingbird Bakery Cupcakes

120g plain flour

140g caster sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

40g unsalted butter

120ml whole milk

1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 170c.  Mix the flour, sugar, butter, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.  Gradually pour in half the milk and beat until just incorporated.  In another bowl, whisk together the egg, vanilla extract and remaining milk, then pour this mixture into the flour mix and continue beating until just incorporated.  Do not overmix, but beat until just smooth.  Spoon into paper cases and bake for 20-25 mins until golden brown. 

When cool, top with buttercream and decorate however you wish.