Sweet Sunday is BACK!

s I'm sure you've noticed, I've taken a brief hiatus from cupcake blogging. Not really for any brilliant reason other than I just got kinda burned out on cupcakes... for awhile there, I was making about a batch a week, & while to some cupcake enthusiasts, that doesn't seem like much, I got really burned out. (Cupcakes are more of a hobby for me, a downtime type thing.) Buuuuut, it's back!!! Welcome to the new & revised "Sweet Sundays", where there is consistency in my blogging! :)

When my boyfriend's sister Emilee was in town with their family a few weekends ago, we had a glorious morning of baking. She's a cupcake enthusiast herself, & wanted me to teach her how to make a homemade buttercream. We had a blast, ended up doing more talking than baking (so the entire process took us a lot longer than it should have) but we turned out an INCREDIBLE batch of cupcakes. White Chocolate Cupcakes with my homemade buttercream- really rich, but SO good. I figured if I was going to catch your attention with a blogging comeback, it had to be with an exceptional recipe... so here it is, one of my favorite recipes so far: White Chocolate Cupcakes!

White Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 1 & 1/4 cups cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 6 oz white chocolate

Preheat oven to 350*. Line a standard 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the sugar and butter together until light & fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add the egg & beat until combined. Add the flour mixture in 2 additions, alternating with the milk in 2 additions, beating on low speed until combined; scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Chop 5 oz of the white chocolate into chunks (do not chop too finely- leaving larger chunks allows for pockets of warm white chocolate in the baked cupcake). Add the chopped white chocolate & beat on low speed until just combined (do not overbeat!)

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake until lightly golden & a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 18-20 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool about 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack, then move to wire rack to continue cooling.

Once cooled, frost lightly with Marie's White Buttercream Frosting (found below this post). Use the remaining 1 oz of white chocolate as garnish- simply use a vegetable peeler to peel shavings of white chocolate, & place on top of each cupcake.