So, on friday, I posted the Lychee experiment. This weekend I started actually experimenting with lychee recipes.

Saturday early morning, I started work on these cupcakes.

The cupcakes themselves are made with a combination of coconut milk, coconut oil and lychee puree/juice in lieu of the dairy products in the recipe, so I figured I’d just make it all vegan and I used a commercial egg replacer.

I decided to continue the trend, and make the icing with earth balance margarine, apple sauce, lychee puree and powdered sugar. Again, vegan.

Just under the icing is a thin layer of smushed raspberries.

Topped it off with a thin slice of apple and some sugar sprinkles…

And I ended up with the most moist, tender and delicious cupcake I’ve ever made.

The only thing I would change, is maybe applying the icing as a glaze, as opposed to a glob. You can tell that the apple sauce and the margarine really didn’t bind together too well, and it looks lumpy. It doesnt FEEL lumpy though, and the texture is smooth and silky. It was just a bit too much for the delicate cake underneath.

I was amazed at how well this experiment came out. I was expecting something weird, but really, the lychee flavour is light, and not overpowering, neither is the coconut.

The icing, you can really taste the lychee, but then again, its not overpowering, its just more noticeable than it is in the actual cake.

All in all, its a pretty good cupcake. I liked it, and so did my new neighbours, who I shared them with yesterday.

Anyways, so I’ve been experimenting with lychee, and here is one of the recipes I’ve come up with using lychee puree. I offset the sweetness of the lychee with the richness of coconut milk, and basically converted a regular cake recipe to a vegan cupcake recipe, by using coconut oil instead of butter, and the aforementioned lychee puree/coconut milk mixture instead of regular milk. I had some Ener- G- egg replacer, so I used that instead of regular eggs.

I topped it off with some smashed raspberries and coated it with an apple/lychee coconut oil icing.

This recipe only makes about 12 cupcakes, depending on your cupcake tin size.

So on with the recipe!

You’ll need-
3\4 cup self-rising flour
Heaping 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup sugar
Equivalent 2 eggs worth, egg replacer
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/4 lychee puree
2 tablespoons lychee juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a separate bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.
In another bowl, mix together the coconut milk, lychee puree, lychee juice and vanilla.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, pour in the melted coconut oil. Add the sugar slowly and beat until fluffy. Add the egg replacer. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the coconut milk mixture. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

When the cupcakes are completely cool, you can frost them however you like.

This was the recipe I used for the icing-

2 tablespoons applesauce
2 tablespoons coconut oil or earth balance margarine
2 cups powdered sugar
Lychee juice as needed

Beat together the applesauce and coconut oil. Add the powdered sugar and beat until crumbly, add the lychee juice while the mixer is on, and stop when the mixture starts coming together and smoothing out.

The frosting looks lumpy, but doesn’t feel lumpy. Also, keep it refrigerated, or it will separate, because the juice will start to separate from the fats in the icing, This only happens in the icing bag, mind you, and doesn’t affect the cupcake once iced. (it may have also only been because of the extreme heat here)

So there you go!

Before I iced the cupcakes, I smashed some raspberries in a bowl and spooned a little onto the top of the cupcake. The flavour really added a punch the the cake, that everyone loved.

Top with an apple slice, or some coconut.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 2:19 am and is filed under July 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.