If you have been one of those that bought the book Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans, be aware that her easy-mix yellow cupcake recipe is not a good recipe.

If you have made them and they cratered, it is not your fault! And I hope this make a lot of you feel better.

The weight of the sugar to flour is too high for unbleached AP flour. Cake flour would be a better use, but even then you may just get a flat top. I would suggest AP flour and use 1.5 cups. That way the weight of the two will be the same.

I would also suggest you add another egg yolk to make the structure stronger also.

But I don't know if these two mixes will keep this recipe from tasting like corn bread.

I am getting sick of unbalanced recipes getting published in books and then when they don't work it is our fault. I am going back to formulating my own recipes. At least then I know I won't get the mess I got with this recipe.

Sorry for the rant....

Thanks, LindaF144a! I don't have that particular book but I can't tell you how much time, energy and $$ I've spent over the years on bad recipes! There are very few sources now that I trust for cake recipes. Unfortunately, unless the error is glaring, I don't know enough about the science of baking to recognize that there's something wrong with it or what it is that's wrong!

I think we should start a trend of calling out bad recipes!

The error was glaring to me. I have researched cake formulas for about a year now. I probably still have not touched the tip of the iceberg.

I did a second batch where I added one more egg yolk, used AP bleach flour and increased that by a 1/4 cup. They were a bit better, but still had a bit of an indention. Maybe another 1/4 cup would help or the whole egg. I won't know because I am not using this recipe. The mixing method produces a cake that's akin to a muffin like sponge cake and not in a good way either. This book went to the back of my book shelf.

Linda, I hate the typos in the books too. I always go to amazon to look up the reviews on books before I buy them to see if they are full of mistakes or bad recipes. It really is a help and a time-saver.