Magnolia vanilla cupcakes, tweaked

Introducing: Magnoliaelrania vanilla strawberry cupcakes, with less calories. *giggle*

Cupcake porn illustration


Best frikkin fantastic cupcakes I've eaten. I love the original recipe, but it's so much butter and sugar in it that it hurts just thinking about it. So in my attempt to slim down the calories (not much since when I eat cucpcakes I want the real deal), I ended up with something delicious.

Original recipe, find it here:

• 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

• 2 cups sugar

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 1 cup milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Tweaked, and in metric:

• 2 teasp baking powder

• 1/2 teasp salt

• 210 gr all-purpose flour

• 125 gr butter

• 100 gr kesam (quark, fresh cheese with a sour cream consistency, high on proteins)

• 100 gr sugar

• 100 gr brown sugar

• 25 gr splenda (or other low calorie sweetener equal to 250 gr sugar)

• 4 large eggs

• 2 dl milk (low fat)

• 3 teasp vanilla sugar or 1 teasp vanilla extract

• 6 large strawberries

All ingredients at room temperature.
Preheat oven to 175 Celsius. Recipe gives 24 small cupcakes.

In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, except the sugars. Blend the sugar in another bowl, freeing the brown sugar from clumps.
In a larger bowl mix the butter until creamy, by hand with a fork like I did or a mixer. Mix in kesam until well blended. Add the sugar mix a little at the time and mix it for about 3 min.
Add eggs, one at the time. Add the dry ingredients in three parts and then the milk. I did this entire process with a spatula, blending carefully and letting air into the batter. Do not overmix it.

Fill a muffinpan with paper and spoon the batter in. Cut off the tops of large strawberries and slice them in four pieces. Lightly press one piece into each cupcake. Put the pan in the oven, and let it cook for about 20-25 min. Pop them out from the pan when they're done, and let them cool on a rack. When cold, place your favourite topping on top and enjoy (you don't really need one either)!

Note: Baking powder, salt and 170 gr flour is the same as 1 1/2 cup self-rising flour.

Tip: Make an icing from the strawberry left overs. Simply add smashed/puréed strawberries instead of any liquid to your favourite (butter cream) icing.