Wednesday, May 5, 2010

cupcakes!


Remember those cute little edible decals i got, well i used them tonight. I love them, i know some people don't like them because they think they're "tacky" but i think they're adorable! I made my favorite vegan chocolate cupcakes with vanilla "buttercream". Even if you are not vegan they are worth making, because i personally think that they taste better than most regular cupcakes that i've had.


Here's the recipe (it's from my all time favorite cookbook vegan cupcakes take over the world)

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, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract
1 cup ap 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 350F and line your muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Whisk together the soy milk, and vinegar, then set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla, and other extract, to the soy milk, and beat until foamy.
3. In a separate bowl sift together the dry ingredients.
4. Add the dry in 2 batches to the wet mixture and beat until no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are fine).
5. Pour the mixture into liners, filling about 3/4 of the way full. Bake 18-20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Transfer cupcakes to cooling wrack and let cool completely.

In the ingredients it says to add another extract well you can use any of those or an alcohol. I usually add rum, or just stick with the vanilla. It really all depends on the icing you will be pairing it with.

Now for the cocoa powder in the recipe it is better to use dutch-processed cocoa powder(however if you can't find it normal cocoa powder works fine). Now some of you may be wondering what is this dutch-processed cocoa powder. Well its cocoa powder that is made from cocoa (cacao) beans that have been washed with a potassium solution, to neutralize their acidity. Natural cocoa powder is made from cocoa beans that are simply roasted, then pulverized into a fine powder. It produces a darker color, and a milder smoother flavor, rather that natural cocoa powder that has a more bitter flavor.

Dutch-process cocoa is frequently used in recipes with baking powder, unless there are other acidic ingredients in the recipe, as it doesn't react to baking soda like natural cocoa does. You can substitute natural cocoa powder for Dutch-process in most recipes (though not vice versa).

Okay now heres the vanilla buttercream recipe from the same book:
Ingredients:
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated shortening
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated margarine
3 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup soy milk or soy creamer

Directions:

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

For the margarine i personally like Shedds Willow Run soybean margarine


And here the final picture of one of the cupcakes, just before its about to be devoured :]
(the icing is normally not that melty looking, but my apartment is reallyyyyyy hot so thats why it looks like that :p)

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