New Years Eve can often be a holiday of decadence, elegance, and glamor, which is why vanilla cupcakes topped with spun sugar perfectly embodies the holiday. If you're looking to make a show stopping dessert with a moist vanilla cake, thick luxurious frosting, and crispy caramelized sugar you’ve come to the right place!

Creaming- Creaming your butter and sugar is an important part of getting that fluffy and dense texture. It’s going to take longer than you might initially think, first you’re going to want your butter to be exactly room temperature to avoid grittiness or flatness. I start creaming in my kitchenaid at medium to high speed for 3-4 moments before bringing it down to a low speed for about 3-4 minutes and then alternating from then on. You want your mixture to increase in volume and go from yellow and gritty to pale and fluffy.

Wet Ingredients- Aside from the creaming mixture, the milk, yogurt, and eggs are all a part of your wet ingredients. These all help to create that softness and the egg specifically for that rich dense finish.

Dry Ingredients- Make sure to sift all your dry ingredients beforehand to get those silky smooth ribbons. The more refined the better.

Frosting- This vanilla frosting is thick, delicious, and the flavor profile is definitely simple. If you're wanting something different from the basic notes of vanilla though I recommend browning a ½ cup of butter to add extra notes of delicious caramelization. Just brown the butter till you see flecks and brown spots and then freeze till its room temperature.

Spun Sugar- Okay, I’m going to start by saying spun sugar can be tricky so i'm going to give you some specific notes to help you make the most of your caramelized sugar! Firstly, having a candy thermometer is kind of essential. There are certain degrees this mixture needs to come to both in the heating and cooling stage for it to turn out right. Next remember to grease small bowls you're planning on using to drizzle the sugar over so it can easily be removed for decoration. Bring your sugar, water, corn syrup mixture to 300 degrees before cooling your saucepan in an ice bath and bringing it down to 275 degrees! After this you need to move very quickly, try to have multiple small greased bowls flipped upside down and ready to go because this mixture starts to harden within 5 minutes.