recipe: how to make cotton candy cupcakes

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At long last! Its time. Time for those gosh darn cotton candy cupcakes from scratch. I want you to know something though, before we start. This was not just another cupcake baking experiment, this was....an experience. No joke. Yet again I found myself knee deep in hours of research, because believe it or not, this is my very first vanilla recipe! Bye bye Duncan Hines. So long Betty Crocker. My very first vanilla experience was a hit, and I'm ready to tell you all about it so you too know how to make cotton candy cupcakes.

So after last night's taste test, I became quite obsessed (re: jealous) on how Sugar Sweet Sunshine landed such an incredible vanilla cake base. Seriously, New Yorkers are very, very serious about where you can find a decent cupcake. A native will tell you to steer clear of Magnolias, while a tourist will tell you its amazing. So this morning I of course went crazyyy looking to see if there was any possible chance that SSS shared their recipe in an interview or online in the last decade. All I found were broken links and a lame lemon something or another. I was lucky enough to find a buttercream frosting recipe by them, which was used below. But I wanted a perfectly approved batter! So next was a search for overhyped (but for all the right reasons) Georgetown Cupcakes recipes, and after a good half an hour, I found a cupcake wars article in the Washington Post where GC obviously won, and was nice enough to share their chocolate ganache recipe. Yay! Oh, just one thing, I needed vanilla. Oh well.