On Veganism and Cupcakes

Vegan baking happens at our place. It happens a lot. I’m admittedly the one token vegan, but in our fridge you’re generally more likely to find rice milk than cow’s milk, Earth Balance than butter, and you’ll come across tofu more often than beef. My stack of cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskovitz are collectively enjoyed, sometimes worshipped, and are the first place any of us will turn when baked goods are needed.

There’s always that initial reaction of people who haven’t sunken their teeth into so much as one vegan cookie before, and who are pretty sure they’ve never eaten anything vegan before in their life, to the words ‘vegan cupcakes’. I’ve heard, “Aren’t those really bad?”, “How can you make cake without eggs?”, and, “I’m sorry, I just can’t see it being the same.”

One of my personal convictions about veganism is that it’s a personal choice, and we all have the right to that; you won’t catch me waving PETA literature and trying to convert people. Where I do try to change their minds, though, is when it comes to this prevailing view that food without animal products just can’t be as good, and that anyone who eats this way is seriously deprived. I guess at some point I just got sick of the looks of pity I sometimes receive as people imagine me subsisting entirely on celery sticks and hummus. I’ve heard, “Wow, you must miss dessert,” and from my previous boss, “No wonder you’re so skinny; you must hardly eat anything.”

I love surprising these people; I love that all it takes is a cupcake for them to change their minds. I’ve been told in the case of cupcakes, cookies, and most triumphantly, cheesecake, that the vegan recipes I’ve found have actually tasted better than their egg- and dairy-laden counterparts. It’s in this spirit of changing people’s minds about what does and doesn’t need to be present for the enjoyment of food that I love to put effort into feeding people.

The two following batches of cupcakes were from a Vegan Feast Night that I hosted when I was staying with my family over Christmas. I won’t go into details about the rest of the dinner, as this is first and foremost a cupcake blog, but I will say that I spent two straight days cooking, and that the end result was an enormous smorgasbord of internationally inspired dishes; everybody left stuffed to the gills. The metaphorical icing on the metaphorical cupcake that was this dinner, though, were these non-metaphorical cupcakes: the first are Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes, and the second are tiramisu, both from ‘Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World’, the book that we will forever be writing the praises of because there are just too many good things to be said. The Mexican hot chocolate ones were lovely, baked with corn flour for a bit of a crunch, and a little cayenne pepper for just the slightest hint of spiciness. The tiramisu cupcakes were so good that I’m going to make a whole other post about the batch that I made last week; they are heaven in cupcake form.

Without further ado:









Love and kittens,

Sara

Salad Cupcakes!

Alright, this probably sounds kind of strange, but it makes sense when given the event they were being taken to. Right now me and Emily are a in group that is work-shopping a musical called Salad Days (not the one that just reopened), and a few days ago we had a potluck at our rehearsal. So since I love making cupcakes, and since the title of the show is Salad Days, I thought why not make salad-themed cupcakes!

I used the Basic Vegan Chocolate Cupcake recipe, and added 2 tsp of orange extract. When they came out and had cooled off, I cut the tops off and stuck them back on with the Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting upside-down to make a flat surface and dusted them with icing sugar. Then, using more frosting, I stuck on little Belgian chocolate dessert cups that I was able to get at our local grocery store (which is saying something; we live in small-town New Brunswick). These made the bowls for the salads.



















To make the salads themselves I mixed the rest of the frosting with green food colouring and piped little rosettes into the cups. I sliced some red and yellow jujubes to make the vegetables, added some green and yellow star sprinkles, and then drizzled on a strawberry syrup mixed with cornstarch as the salad dressing.


They were super tasty!!!!

Enjoy!
~Francesca

The Pollock Cupcake!

So this post is coming a lot later than I had originally planned, life just does that sometimes. But here goes...finally.

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes are by far my favourite cupcakes! There's just something about the sweetness of chocolate with a fresh and cool blast of mint that gets me going :P. They are also really simple to make and this version is completely vegan! This recipe uses the Basic Chocolate Cupcake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, that Francesca posted in her Chocolate Strawberry Lovecakes post. For the mint variation, add 1 tsp. of peppermint extract. Also used in this recipe is a mint chocolate ganache as a topping. See below for recipe.

Of course in order for any cupcake to be complete it needs to be decorated. My favourite thing to use for decorating, since I'm not quite as skilled at piping frosting as Sara, are Scribblers. They are wonderful little tubes of icing, that come in red, blue, yellow and green. At the time of this cupcake adventure I could only find the red, yellow and blue. I decided not to be particularily specific (or careful) in my designs but by pure serendipity I ended up with the ever famous (in our house) Pollock Cupcake!!


You too can make your very own Pollock cupcake! All you need are Scribblers and at least one cupcake, although one cupcake is never enough for the intrepid cupcake adventurer.

Step One: Take one colour of Scribbler and squeeze the icing out over the cupcake surface in a haphazard like pattern.

Step Two: Repeat step one with another colour

Step Three: Repeat step one with anothe colour, other than the colour used in step two.

ETC....until you have used all the colours you have. And TA-DA! You have a genuine Pollock Cupcake!! Tune in next time for more Art Historical Cupcake Creations.

And as promised here is a recipe for Chocolate Mint Ganache, a good substitute for frosting. The measurements are estimates as I don't usally measure when it comes to ganache.

Ingredients:

1/2 of a 300g bag of Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips
1/4 Cup of Soy Milk
1 tsp. of Vanilla extract
1 tsp. of Mint extract

Directions:

Put chocolate chips in a pot on low heat.
Add Soy Milk and extracts
Stir frequently until melted and mixed together
Spread on cupcakes!


And that's all! Easy-peasy! Hope you too love the minty goodness of chocolate mint cupcakes!

Emily

Hey-oh,

We're just waiting for Emily to make a post about her artist-inspired mint chocolate cupcakes, but in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures of the antagonist of our cupcake adventures.


He may look cute, but he always knows how to get under foot when cupcakes are being made and he has a way of claiming cupcakes as is own, despite our careful efforts to avoid this.

Dang cat.

~Francesca

Chocolate Strawberry Lovecakes!!!!

These were a special creation for a friend's games night. In hopes of impressing a fellow friend (who ended up not coming...) we decorated them more elaborately and painstakingly than usual.

The recipe for these was an adaptation of Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero's "Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake" (pages 37-38), with the variation "Strawberry Tallcakes" (pages 34-36) from their book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (this book is our primary recipe resource...it is loved and worshipped in this household). For frosting we used the "Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting" and used red & blue food colouring and dragees to decorate.

What makes these cupcakes particularly exciting is the beautiful frosting roses that Sara made using pink coloured frosting and a special piping tip. Since I have no experience with this technique (which, if done by a beginner, will often produce frosting cabbages instead of frosting roses), I got the task of carefully placing dragees on the roses to look like little dew drops. We also used the cutout pieces of cupcake as part of the decoration so as to maximize the use of our ressources. The result looks somewhat like little cupcake hats. The purple frosting conceals the gap between the cupcake hats and the strawberry preserve filling. It also tastes AMAZING!!!!!!! I think I ate about six of these last night...and I had one for breakfast... and Emily made mint chocolate cupcakes tonight... I'm going to the gym.


"Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake"

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and line muffin pan with paper liners (we used prettily marked purple pink and blue ones)

2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla, and almond extract to the soy milk mixture till foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat till no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are okay).

3. Pour into liners, filling three quarters of the way. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. For our oven, which is new, it took 18 minutes, but with our old one it took about 25 minutes, so be patient ad keep an eye on them. Transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely.

"Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting"

Ingredients:

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated shortening
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated margerine (Earth Balance is good)
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain soy milk

Directions:

Beat the shortening and margerine together until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the vanilla and soy milk, beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.

"Strawberry Tallcakes" Variation

Ingredients:

1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh (or frozen if you're broke students like us...) strawberries
3 tbs. maple syrup

Directions:

Combine strawberries and maple syrup and set aside to macerate for at least 30 minutes. Spoon out cupcake centres and set aside (these will become the little hats!). Fill the centres of the cupcakes with about 2 tbs. of the berry mix, pipe on some frosting, and top with the cupcake hat. You may choose to decorate more to your heart's content!

I hope you too will try out these yummy and heart-warming creations!

Francesca

Hello!

Dear Cupcakians

In just a moment we will be posting pictures of our most recent cupcake extravaganzas, but first we would like to say a little hello!

So, Hello! and Welcome to Frost Me Silly!

Sara Francesca Emily