Cupcakes taste like baking soda, how do I fix it?!

Make sure you are adding the correct amount of baking soda. Sometimes it is easy to get abbreviations confused. TSP is teaspoon and TBSP is tablespoon.

If you've got the amount right, then you did not sift your ingredients together.

When you make a recipe that calls for baking soda, you need to sift it into the flour to evenly distribute it. If you add it any other way, its going to give you that yucky taste.

You don't even have to own a sifter to fix this problem. Add all your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, etc) to their very own bowl and then just whisk them together or stir them together with a fork really well before you begin to add your wet ingredients.

I had the same thing happen to me when I made oatmeal cookies for a friend's birthday and her mom suggested that I try sifting the dry ingredients together first.

Make sure you're using the right thing. People get baking soda and baking powder mixed up. They are not interchangeable. Also, make sure you're not using tablespoons (tbs) instead of teaspoons (tsp). You'll have to make a new batch as there is no way of correcting what you've already made.

Vanilla makes a big difference if you haven't included that yet....