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