Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with White Chocolate and Cream Cheese Icing

I made these cupcakes for a family wedding recently.  Because it was a special wedding – I really wanted to make them a bit special. I love the red velvet cupcake icing so I wanted to use that with a bit of a twist to fancy it up a bit! So I did some research and came across a few recipes and merged them all together and came up with these beauties!  The white chocolate really did add that something decadent (if you can get more decadent than cream cheese icing!) – they were a hit and my first official wedding baking experience may have left me with a few grey hairs, but they were delicious and the beautiful bride and groom were happy! PHEW!

For the Vanilla Bean Cupcakes:

2 ¼  cups cake flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 ¼  cups full cream milk (room temperature)

4 large egg whites (room temperature)

120g unsalted butter (room temperature)

1 ½  cups sugar

Seeds scraped from one vanilla bean

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

For the White Chocolate and Cream Cheese Icing:

175g white chocolate, chopped

250g cream cheese, softened

¼ cup (50ml) butter softened

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 cups (500ml) icing sugar

For the Cupcakes:

• Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 180 C.
• In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk and egg whites.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla bean seeds at medium speed for 3 minutes, or until the butter and sugar are very light.
• Add in the vanilla extract and one third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed. Beat in half of the milk-egg mixture, then beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients until well incorporated.
• Add the rest of the milk and eggs, beating until the batter fully incorporated and smooth, then add the last of the dry ingredients.
• Once ingredients are thoroughly incorporated, give the batter a good 2-minute beating to ensure that it is thoroughly mixed and well aerated.
• Fill about 18 free-standing muffin cases with about 2 heaped tablespoons of the batter.
• Place the muffin cases onto a baking tray and bake for 18-24 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centers come out clean. Cool on wire rack

For the icing:

• Place the white chocolate in a glass bowl that fits snuggly on a small saucepan filled with a little bit of water (don’t let the glass bowl touch the water) and bring the water to a simmer and the chocolate will slowly melt. Stir occasionally until completely melted. Take off the heat and saucepan and let it stand and cool for a few minutes. Stirring occasionally. Don’t let it stand too long and start setting! It must be luke warm.
• In a clean mixing bowl, beat the butter and the cream cheese together and then pour in the chocolate and vanilla and combine everything together.
• Slowly add the icing sugar and beat well.
• Place the icing into a piping bag and let it cool in the fridge for about 2 – 3 minutes.
• Ice and decorate as desired!

This was the final result 🙂