As an incentive, I offered to bake a batch of vegan cupcakes for the lucky purchaser.

It just so happened that the person who responded to the post I made about it on damnportlanders is the wife of one of my husbands co-workers. They ended up buying the car, and last night I made a batch of vegan cupcakes for my husband to bring to work with him, to give to his co-worker to bring home.

This one.. well..

It “didn’t fit” in the container, so.. I had to keep it. What can I say?

Its Cherry almond flavoured. I loves it. Last night after I made the icing, Aaron licked the beaters because he liked the flavour so much. Best thing, its completely vegan, and oh so tasty.

Today is another super hot day here ineverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comn the Northwest, and tomorrow is looking like it will be even hotter. For the next week or so, I’ll probably post mostly no-bake or low-bake goodies and foods, simply because turning on the oven is nearly painful with all the heat in the house.

Here’s the recipe- (which is very similar to previous vegan cupcake recipes I’ve posted. Go figure)

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 Cup plain soymilk
1 1/4 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon. baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 Tablespoon Vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon Almond extract
1/4 Cup finely ground almonds (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line muffin tin with paper cupcake liners, Set aside.

Mix together the soymilk and apple cider vinegar in a small bowl. Stir well and set aside for about five minutes (the mixture will curdle).

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another mixing bowl whisk together the soymilk mixture, oil, vanilla, and almond extract. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and whisk together until all of the large lumps are gone. (the recipe actually said to use a hand mixer, but I felt that it’s much to easy to over beat your batter with a mixer, so I just whisk it.) Fold in the 1/4 of finely ground almonds.

Fill each muffin cup about 2/3rds full. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes from the pan and place on a wire rack. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

The icing I used was-

1/2 cup non hydrogenated vegan shortening
1/2 cup vegan margarine (earth balance)
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
4 tablespoons plain soymilk
2 tablespoons almond extract
1 tablespoon cherry extract
one drop of whatever kind of food colouring you’d like. (I used pink, the cherry extract kind of gives it a light pink colour anyways)

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat the shortening and margarine together until fully incorporated and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar to that and beat until the mixture is crumbly, but the powdered sugar is fully incorporated. While the mixer is still on, add the soymilk slowly, and then the flavouring and then the colouring. Beat for a few minutes.. just until its fluffy.

Make sure the cupcakes are FULLY cooled before frosting. The frosting melts quick, so the colder the cupcake the better. You can refrigerate the frosting, but if you chill it longer than a few hours, you’ll want to “re-fluff” it in the mixer before you use it. Just let the icing warm up on the counter for about 15 minutes and whip it in the mixer for a minute or two.

I have to tell you, this recipe makes DELICIOUS cupcakes and the icing is to die for. It is wonderful. I’m not even vegan and I want to make it all the time!

Use the cake batter immediately. If you don’t, you never know if you’ll end up with something chewy and shaped like a hockey puck.

Sometimes this recipe bakes up and the cupcakes are kind of tough on the top. Just make sure to ice them, and store them in the fridge overnight, and they’ll be just fine. The more practice you get with this recipe, the less likely you are to have tough topped cupcakes though.

Another little tip, this recipe is for cupcakes. It will not rise properly if you try to make a full sized cake with this recipe. Same for most of my recipes. Its just not a good idea.

These cupcakes are seriously tasty. I love them. You should make some today!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 2:23 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.