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Single Serve Vanilla Cupcake
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When you’re craving a soft, fluffy, buttery vanilla cupcake, but don’t feel like making a whole batch, you need this single serve vanilla cupcake recipe. Made with simple ingredients like flour, sugar, and vanilla extract, this cupcake is easy to make and comes together in just a few minutes.
Single Serve Vanilla Cupcake
WE GET IT–you guys love single serve desserts. And our most requested small-batch treat as of late has been a vanilla cupcake! So here she is. This single serve vanilla cupcake recipe is the perfect solution for when you want to sink your teeth into a buttery, soft, tender vanilla cupcake but don’t want to whip up a whoooooole batch of cupcakes. Made with simple ingredients like flour, sugar, and vanilla extract, this cupcake is easy to make and comes together in just a few minutes.
This recipe is perfectly portioned to make 2 cupcakes, so you can have one for you…and one for future you 🙂 You’ll thank me later.
Ingredients for this individual vanilla cupcake recipe
You’ll need all the usual suspects for this vanilla cupcake recipe, so you can probably whip this up with what you already have stocked in your pantry. This single serve version is just a scaled down version of our tried and true vanilla cupcake recipe, so you’ll need all those same ingredients to whip this tiny version too! Here’s your grocery list:
- Butter
- Vegetable oil
- Granulate sugar
- Egg white
- Milk
- Vanilla extract
- All purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Powdered sugar
Tips for making this single serve vanilla cupcake recipe
This single serve vanilla cupcake recipe is super simple to make (and way less work than making a whole batch of vanilla cupcakes), but these tricks will help you produce soft, fluffy cupcakes every time you whip these up!
- Be super precise with your measurements. It is so important to measure precisely with single serve desserts. In a full size recipe a little discrepancy with your measurements won’t make too much of a difference, but with measurements this small it can greatly affect the final product!
- Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. SO IMPORTANT. This will help everything come together smoothly and allow you to beat the air into the batter to get those fluffy cupcakes you’re looking for.
- Use high quality vanilla. Rodelle Vanilla is my vanilla extract of choice and they are THE BEST. Especially in a vanilla based cake.
- Don’t over mix your batter! Obviously you don’t want huge clumps of straight flour in your batter, but as soon as everything is smooth, resist the temptation to keep mixing, and trust that you’ve gotten enough air in it during the early stages.
- Under bake the cupcakes slightly. Remember that baked goods continue to cook as they cool down, so it’s okay if your cupcakes are every so slightly underdone before taking them out of the oven. By the time they cool down they’ll be perfectly moist and tender.
Happy baking, my friends!
XXX
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- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 2 cupcakes
- Category: dessert
- Method: american
- Cuisine: dessert
Single Serve Vanilla Cupcake
When you’re craving a soft, fluffy, buttery vanilla cupcake, but don’t feel like making a whole batch, you need this single serve vanilla cupcake recipe. Made with simple ingredients like flour, sugar, and vanilla extract, this cupcake is easy to make and comes together in just a few minutes.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 2 cupcakes
- Category: dessert
- Method: american
- Cuisine: dessert
Ingredients
for the vanilla cupcakes
- 1 tablespoon butter, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 egg white, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 2 tablespoons milk
for the vanilla buttercream
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons milk
- pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two muffin cups of a standard size muffin tin with cupcake liners. Set aside.
- In a small mixing bowl, stir together the butter and vegetable oil with a whisk or fork (you can also use a handmixer to make things go faster!) until smooth and combined. If your butter is too cold, you can microwave the mixture for a few seconds to soften it up!
- Add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy and pale in color, about 1 minute. Add the egg white, milk, and vanilla extract and mix well.
- Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and use a small rubber spatula to fold the mixture together until no streaks of flour remain.
- Use a silicone spatula to scrape the batter evenly into the prepared muffin cups. Bake until the cupcakes have domed up, resist light pressure, and a butter knife inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 20 to 25 minutes.
- While the cupcakes cool, make the frosting. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the butter, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and salt. Mix until fluffy and combined.
- Transfer the frosting to a piping bag fitted with a small round tip (don’t feel like piping? You can also just spoon the frosting on top!). Pipe the frosting onto the two cupcakes. Top with sprinkles, if desired. Serve.
Date night idea cards said to make your own flavored cupcake for your partner. My husband didn’t bother to read the instructions and just put everything together in a bowl, cold, right out of the fridge. Then he beat it for 5 minutes and didn’t prepare any frosting. I was sad because I made his cupcake with his favorite dessert flavor of lemon. Lemon juice, lemon rind in both the batter and frosting with a lemon slice on top. It looked so fluffy and beautiful! He ate the whole thing up only giving me a small taste. On the other hand his flat cupcake with no frosting and a hint of mint (another of his favorite, not mine) was surprisingly very good! This basic cupcake recipe was great and we’ll be making it again!
THANK YOU! this was delish and so easy to throw together! And since I would be wasting food I did an experiment with different flours (coconut, almond and cassava) then had a taste test with the family and all three worked well with this recipe. I love this single serving recipe and will probably try adding cocoa next time to make a chocolate version. Loving these single serving recipes!!
Is there a reason I can’t convert the recipe to yield more? I was able to do it before but as of lately it’s not letting me.
Hi Breana! Unfortunately scale feature was glitching so much that it was showing innacurate information for sizing up the recipe! You can find the full recipe here though!
Ok thank you for responding! I assume you have a separate buttercream recipe as well?
So I can use the cake recipe to make a bigger batch of cupcakes? I want to make these cupcakes but not as a single serving.
Hi Maggie! Yes! You can find the full size recipe here!