Raspberry-Filled Vanilla Cupcakes

I really love the unexpected surprise of biting into a cupcake and finding some sort of filling. When my sister asked me to bake her cupcakes and bring them with me to her college on Saturday, I knew I would be doing a filled cupcake. She initially asked for raspberry frosting, but older sisters know best, and I went with a vanilla cupcake filled with raspberry with vanilla frosting. Plus I knew she'd be psyched to get whatever I baked her. I also made some mint chocolate chip ones that I will post about later this week.

I enlisted Morgan to watch me bake these. What a crazy and exciting Friday night for both of us, especially for Morgan. Being as I'm bad at delegating tasks, she was forced to just sit there and watch me. I don't trust anyone to help me with cupcakes, unless it's cleaning, and no one ever wants to do that. If I did pick a baking assistant though, it would be Morgan being as she was a chemistry major in college, and I always liken baking to chemistry. Plus, she was my high school lab partner, and I was usually the one dragging her down in labs.

I used the vanilla recipe from Sweet Revenge that was featured on Martha Stewart. The recipe can be found here. After trying every single vanilla recipe I could find (literally) and attempting to create my own, this recipe was a godsend. Most vanilla recipes produce cupcakes that are dry and bland, but this is way above the rest.

There are two methods of filling cupcakes. The first is marginally easier; you just inject the filling directly into the cake using a pastry bag or injector set. I think this is good when filling mini cupcakes. I prefer to cut a cone shape out of the cupcake with a paring knife, cut the bottom triangle off the cone, fill and then recover and frost. This allows more filling into the cake.


After I've cut the cone out of all the cupcakes, I usually eat all the extra cupcake scraps. This isn't a crucial step in the process, but I'd recommend it. Then I fill a ziploc baggie with the filling (in the case, Polaner seedless red raspberry preserves), cut the tip off the end, and squeeze the filling into the cupcakes. After that's done, I place the tops back on, and they're ready to be frosted.

Cupcake filled with raspberry

Frosted Cupcake

I had some vanilla frosting frozen from the last time I baked my sister cupcakes for her birthday, so I just thawed that out, snipped the end off the ziploc bag, and piped it onto the cupcake in a swirl. This is a good technique to make cupcakes look more professional with minimal effort. I still had some extra raspberry left over, so I piped that on top of the frosting in the grooves of the swirl. I really liked the way these looked and tasted, and I'm hoping my sister shared the 30 cupcakes I brought her with her friends, rather than her usual pattern of eating them all by herself (I brought her about 75 mini cupcakes for her birthday, and I think she ate them all on her own. Being as I know her friends are reading this blog, I guess I'll just have to wait and see what they say.