White Cake & Cream Cheese Frosting Recipes

I thought it would be good to post the recipes I used to make the cupcakes that came out amazingly! I have included the small tweaks that I had to make in order for the recipe to work in Chile. Don't forget to be exact in your measurements at least for the cake mix. Baking always requires exact measurements whereas cooking is more forgiving.

Basic White Cake (from here)

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted* cake flour**
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon baking powder (polvo de hornear)
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
6 egg whites

*Make sure you sift your flour before you measure the 3 cups to be used. I don't actually own a sifter but I have some small strainers and used that for make-shift sifting.

**I have no idea if cake flour exists in Chile and I wasn't very interested in starting a search for it so I looked online and found out that you can use all-purpose flour to do the job. However, the ratio is not 1:1 which is where you have to be careful. I used harina sin polvos de hornear (all purpose flour w/o baking powder) since the recipe calls for you to add extra. In any case, the ratio that I found online for substituting cake flour for all purpose is: 1 cup minus 2 TBL all purpose flour = 1 cup cake flour. Did you get that? All purpose flour has more gluten than cake flour and if you use a direct substitution you will get a hard cake. So for every cup of cake flour that a recipe calls for, you should take 1 cup of all purpose flour and take out 2 tablespoons of the all-purpose flour. Again, I did this after I had "sifted" the flour.

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (I have no idea how to measure this in an oven heated by actual flames, so I put it at a low-medium heat. Better to have less heat than more so you don't get burned cupcake bottoms, even if it takes a bit longer).

Grease and flour 2-9 inch cake pans (I used cupcake pans and put liners in them.).

With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar (Anyone in Chile, this means use your elbow grease to cream the two.). Mix in vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine cake flour, baking powder and salt with a wire whisk. Add flour mixture [to creamed butter & sugar] alternately with milk until all combined.

In a clean, dry bowl beat egg whites until stiff but not dry (this will tire our your arm for sure!). With a rubber spatula, add a scoop of egg whites to cake batter. Then fold in the rest. Carefully, divide batter between pans (or scoop into the cupcake pans).

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (my cupcakes took approx. 10 minutes to cook). Test with toothpick for doneness. Cool cakes in pans on rack for 15 minutes. Remove to racks to cool completely.


Cream Cheese Frosting (don't remember where I got this, sorry)

Ingredients:
8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
6 Tbsp. butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
Dash salt
2-4 Tbsp. light cream (I mixed regular cream with some 2% milk, or leche semi-descremada)
1 tsp. Vanilla
1/4 tsp. almond extract (this was my addition)
Food coloring if desired (also my addition)

Preparation:
In large bowl, combine cream cheese and butter and beat until light and fluffy. Alternately add powdered sugar and light cream, beating until desired spreading consistency. Beat in salt and vanilla and use to frost cake. (I separated the frosting into three parts and added food coloring to make pretty pink, blue and green cupcakes.)
Enjoy!!!

~Tyffanie