Cupcake recipes?

Okay, I'm soliciting- I need a tasty cupcake recipe for my little girl's birthday party.  For some reason cupcakes seem SO much more doable than an entire cake.  Our favorites have always been the carrot muffins with cream cheese frosting from Trader Joe's, but I'm looking to find a recipe that my little boy and I can make together. 

I'm very competent at baking bread, but the sweeter baking stuff & I never really hit it off.  The only thing that I can bake repeatedly with the same results are the mexican wedding cake cookies from Baking Illustrated. Or whatever they're called, I think they actually have a couple of different names. 

Anyway, I'd love suggestions for anything other than chocolate, she's not a fan and sadly, neither am I really.  So what are your favorite cupcake recipes? 

Comments

[Katrin]

My faves are Sprite Muffins, because they are simple, fresh & tasty.

Mix 4 eggs with 250g of sugar till it's creamy. Add 200 ml oil (I use sunflower oil) and 200 ml Sprite (or any other sparkling lemon-flavoured soft drink). Stir well. Add 350g of flour and 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Mix again, just until the flour is all spread and you got a soft dough, which can now be poured into a muffin form. Fill only to 3/4, cause they will rise. Put into the pre-heated oven and bake for app 15-20 minutes at 180°C.
Take out and allow to cool. Add lemon frosting or sprinkle with powdered sugar.

You may add grated peel of untreated lemons to the dough to make it even more lemon-y or substitute some Sprite with plain lemon juice.

[MaggieN]

I made these chocolate cupcakes from Martha Stewart and they were pretty easy and really delicious. I hope this link works. http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/devils-food-cupcakes?autonomy_kw=choclate%20buttermilk%20cupcakes&rsc=header_13

I am sure that whatever you make will be really good.

[Bladerunner]

Look through the Cupcake Project website. There's tons of cupcake and frosting recipes, along with her notes of how things worked (or didn't). The project is a good read, too, whether you use her projects or not.

[val]

I bought the cupcake mix book....it has great recipes in it using cake mixes that you doctor up.
You can also go to the Martha Stewart website...she has 2 cupcake recipes, an icing recipe and 12 decoration ideas.....1 per month for a year. You can print it out too. Just do it individually or it prints funny.

[val]

I bought the cupcake mix book....it has great recipes in it using cake mixes that you doctor up.
You can also go to the Martha Stewart website...she has 2 cupcake recipes, an icing recipe and 12 decoration ideas.....1 per month for a year. You can print it out too. Just do it individually or it prints funny.

[Hannah]

You can always make banana bread into cupcakes/muffins and top it off with a cream cheese frosting. They
re easy enough for little hands to make, too. This one is fool proof: http://theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=121