Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes and an Icing Crisis

As promised, here are the photos of our vegan (and gluten-free and refined sugar-free) chocolate cupcakes!

Vegan icing attempt #2!! (Attempt #1 already thrown in the trash)

Okay seriously? What the heck, vegan icing! Soo much wasted time and money!

Both recipes called for a basis of coconut oil, which I believe was at the root of the problem. It's solid at room temperature, but not completely smooth unless melted, which accounts for the chunky texture.

Despite it's unique appearance, we ventured on. Voila! A vegan chocolate cupcake with vanilla icing! Please note the mysterious drip oozing out of the icing. Weird, right? As I mentioned previously, the chocolate cakes were delicious, but that dang icing... We tried two different recipes, and both times we ended up with an icing that resembled overly sweet cottage cheese. What is the secret to vegan icing? If you happen to know the answer to that question, please humor me and tell me what on earth we did wrong! Both icing attempts yielded extraordinarily unfortunate results. Boo!

So into the garbage went vegan icing #2. We didn't want to leave our little cakes undressed, so we did the only thing we knew how, which was to make a coconut cream cheese icing instead - an icing that is so filled with un-vegan things that you know it has to be good. Finally an icing that looked white! and smooth! and creamy! All of the things our vegan icing wasn't. Ky said that the chocolate cake and cream cheese icing pairing could have been better. I think he was hoping for a billowy white vanilla frosting, which I agree would have been ideal. However, I feel like I could eat cream cheese icing out of a cereal bowl for breakfast and be set for life, so I thought the combo was sweet (so to speak).

To finish, just for fun, we sprinkled the freshly iced cakes with Bob's Organic Unsweetened Coconut flakes. Oh yes!

This project was certainly a learning experience. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why for a first real attempt at baking gluten-free and vegan, I decided to combine the two experiences into one. I like a good challenge or something (this a cliche, and a bit of a lie, I'm just trying I think of a reason for my decision). You know, for now, I'm going to stick with my familiar friends in the kitchen (butter! sugar! flour! oh my!). They're much better.

Photo's by Kyran Yeomans

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes (Gluten- and refined sugar- free)

Adapted from Babycakes by Erin McKenna

These cupcakes were super yummy. Unfortunately, your on your own in terms of icing these guys. I do NOT recommend the vegan icing in the Babycakes cookbook (see above, and previous post!), or that icing that comes from a can (come on, these cakes deserve better, and so does your body!). See what you can come up. You're industrious young people!

1 3/4 cups garbanzo - fava bean flour

1/2 cup potato starch

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 cup arrowroot

1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup coconut oil

1 1/3 cup agave nectar

3/4 cup homemade applesauce (or store bought unsweetened)

3 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup hot water or coffee

Preheat oven to 325 F. Line 2 standard 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the four, potato starch, cocoa powder, arrowroot, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan gum, and salt. Add the oil, agave nectar, applesauce, vanilla, and hot water to the dry ingredients. Stir until the batter is smooth.

Pour 1/3 cup batter into each prepared cup, almost filling it. Bake the cupcakes on the center rack for 22 minutes, rotating the tins 180 degrees after 15 minutes. The finished cupcakes will bounce back when pressure is applied gently to the center

Let the cupcakes stand in the tins for 20 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Spread with your favorite icing.

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Note: Store the cupcakes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Testing

Today is a snowstorm and vegan chocolate cake(!!!).

I am frolicking about the house in knee-highs and a silk skirt, with Thelonius Monk, fireplace blazing, ignorantly ignoring the fluffy white flakes falling from the sky.

I'm all wrong for this weather.

I'm just popping in to say "hello" in between playing games of speed scrabble with my sister and studying for my abundance of midterms coming up this week. And I've actually got something pretty cool to share. Today officially marks my first attempt at baking vegan. Kyran had requested a remake of a vegan cake his sister made once upon a time, and I happily obliged. So today, he and I made vegan, refined sugar-free, and gulten-free chocolate cupcakes from this cookbook:

Right off the bat I'm thinking, if you bake without sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and flour, what the heck is the point of baking at all? I've done the whole vegan thing, and while I loved it at the time, I am vegan no longer and loving it. Also, vegan baking has a tendency to be loaded with ingredients with names that awkwardly fill your mouth and are impossible to pronounce. Not good. But, I had heard some really wonderful things regarding this vegan and gluten-free bakery from NYC (if it's good enough for Natalie Portman, certainly it must be good enough for us regular folk), so I picked up their cookbook a couple weeks ago and have been daydreaming of garbonzo bean flour and coconut oil ever since.

Today we opted for chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting. Our icing was a disaster, as in, it resembled cottage cheese rather than that gorgeous smooth, billowy stuff in the photos. Flavour wise, it was okay. But I was disappointed I wasted an entire tablespoon of my expensive vanilla extract on it. I was quite offended by this vanilla frosting imitator. When I bake, it turns out. Always! Kyran scoured Amazon reviews to see what the deal was and found that many reviewers were disapointedby the result of their vanilla icing as well. We also read rumor that the icing in the book isn't actually the same as the famous icing they use in the bakery. Lame. So that was the bad news. We rectified the situation by pouring the icing down the drain, and searching the web to find an alternate recipe. Kyran is experimenting with another variety of vegan icing (one using coconut milk! Mmm!) as we speak. I'll keep you posted as to how it turns out!

On the bright side of things, the cakes were delicious. Decadent, moist, and sinfully chocolatey. I was pleasantly suprised by the final product, which resulted from the combination of potato starch, arrowroot, garbanzo bean flour, agave nectar, and other strange and magical things. Kyran ate two, right off the bat, and is probably eating more right now-sans icing, which puts it into the "totally delicious, definitely will make again" territory.

I don't want to deliver my final verdict of the Babycakes NYC cookbook just yet. After all, I've only made two recipes. However, I think I will continue to be perplexed by the addition of altered bakery recipes that don't turn out well. What's the deal? I want that billowy frosting Babycakes is known to have, and now I have to go search for it elsewhere. Oh well. The chocolate cupcakes were quite wonderful and were the perfect treat for an afternoon snuggled up to my favorite person in the world, whilethe entire world slowly turned white.

Photo's of the final product coming SOON!