The Cupcakes Love You

Valentines Cupcakes! I make cupcakes for lots of reasons, mostly for no reason at all. Most the time.., I don’t even eat them. I can’t handle too much sweet stuff without putting on a pucker face and almost passing out from sugar overdose, not sure why. What that means though is my roommate gets to eat them all himself! My roommate is vegan, so I just make them vegan, especially easy since there’s no eggs or milk in the house anyway. You may think this makes them taste.. well, weird, but they dont at all and they’re way better for you than eggy milky ones (calorie/fat-wise). With that said, I bake pretty often and cook some new and interesting (vegan) meal almost every night, a habit I got into by living in a country where I didn’t like the food and would have to look all over the city for ingredients, just to imitate what I wanted to eat. Im not vegan but I like to cook for people so, vegan it is. I seriously could write a vegan cookbook of actually great tasting food (with no tofu even).

Here is my first recipe to be public, for the sole sake of wishing everyone a tolerable valentines, even if you stay at home, watch a movie and make my cupcakes.

Kat’s Kick-ass Valentines Cupcakes

makes 16 cupcakes

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 ½   cups vanilla or flavoured soymilk. I use Pumpkin Spice.

2 1/8 cups flour

2 Teaspoons baking powder

½ Teaspoon baking soda

½ Teaspoon salt

1 1/8 cups sugar

½ cup margarine (sometimes I stick it in the microwave for 20 seconds so its easy to stir)

1 ¼ Teaspoons vanilla extract

Handful of Coconut flakes (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 º. Line a cupcake pan with paper cupcake liners (you can spray them with nonstick spray or smear in some margarine to help the cupcakes release). Set aside.

Place the apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup and fill the cup with soymilk to equal 1 ½ cups. Stir well and set aside (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, margarine, vanilla, and coconut.   Add the wet to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth using a wisk or whatever you think you can manage with. Stir until its not lumpy anymore.

Fill each muffin cup 3/4 full, they will bleed just barely over the edge of the paper liner.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, but check at 15. stick a toothpick in the middle of a few and see if it comes out clean, if not, put it back in.

Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting, or the frosting will just liquify and slide off, although putting a little on when theire hot makes a neat little crusty sugary layer when theyre cool and refrosted.

For the fronting this time, I just used store bought stuff. The best ones are creamcheese based, and yes they make vegan cream cheese!

I Dyed the frosting   with Neon pink food coloring bought at a regular grocery and topped them with valentines jelly beans.

(recipe an adaptation from Schmood Food)

Older cupcake themes:

Halloween

Easter

Heman Cake

No Reason: Lemon Poppyseed Cupcakes

I made christmas ones but apparently did not take photos, this is tragic.

Just for the record, Im not claiming Im an authority at making cupcakes, I decorate like an 8 year old, but I like to make them so I do. If you’re lucky, you can have some.