My oldest's birthday party is next weekend, so I've been searching high and low for a cupcake recipe from heaven. Seriously. It has to be flavorful, moist, and most of all, vegan. Via Pinterest, I found this lovely lady's blog and a beautiful recipe that I successfully tweaked to make it vegan.
Perfectly Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cacao powder (I used Himalania Organic Cacao Powder from Sprouts)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs (or egg substitute)
1 cup chocolate cashew milk (I used Silk)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract (I used Simply Organic Pure Vanilla Extract from Sprouts)
1 cup boiling water
Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tin with paper liners. In a large mixing bowl, stir together sugar, flour, cacao, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Once thoroughly mixed, add in eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 1-2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (which causes the batter to be thin, but this is perfect). Fill liners 2/3 full with batter (putting the batter into a large measuring cup with a pour spout made this so much easier and less messy). Bake cupcakes for 18-22 minutes. Cool completely on wire rack before frosting. This recipe yielded 24 regular sized cupcakes for me.
Bada bing bada boom. It's so moist, light, and full of flavor. Exactly what I had been looking for. Then I went on to search for an icing recipe. Pinterest saved me again by connecting me to yet another lovely lady's blog with the most perfect icing recipe EVER that I once again tweaked to make vegan.
Best Vegan Buttercream Icing
1/2 cup butter substitute, room temperature (I used Smart Balance)
5 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract (again, I used Simply Organic Pure Vanilla Extract from Sprouts)
1/4 cup chocolate cashew milk (again, I used Silk)
In large mixing bowl, beat butter substitute until creamy and fluffy. Add sugar gradually, one cup at a time. Add in vanilla and milk, and mix on high until silky smooth.
By adding chocolate cashew milk instead of just original cashew milk (or other non-dairy milk) it gave it this delicious hint of chocolate so that it paired beautifully with the cupcake recipe, but not so bold that it overpowered the original vanilla buttercream flavors.
These are definitely my new go-to recipes for cakes and icings. They're so simple (but SO tasty) that they can easily be tweaked to accommodate other flavors. Recipes. From. Heaven.
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