What's Vegan and Vanilla All Over?

Thursday, May 16, 2013

These delicious cupcakes, of course!


Sometimes there's nothing better than a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting. I am normally
a chocolate cake kinda grrrl but every once and a while the wind changes and I want vanilla.



These cupcakes are great. They have a nice vanilla flavour, nothing too powerful, and the icing frosting doesn't taste overly sweet. Does anyone else mix up when to use frosting or icing? I'm not too fussy about that stuff, though. Okay... There is quite a lot of icing sugar in the frosting but the recipe makes a heck of a lot! We still have leftovers.



Many of our cupcakes didn't make the cut, photography wise, as Caitlin didn't appreciate my experimentation with wavy frosting but this one looks pretty swell. And tastes great too!

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes with Fluffy Buttercream Frosting
Recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

For the cupcakes:

1 cup unsweetened almond milk

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners. Spray lightly with cooking spray.
Whisk the almond milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside for a few minutes to get good and curdled.
Sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix.
Beat together the almond milk mixture, oil, sugar, vanilla extract in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix until no large lumps remain. 
Fill cupcake liners two-thirds of the way and bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool.
For the vanilla butter cream frosting:
½ cup nonhydrogenated shortening
½ cup nonhydrogenated margarine
3½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup plain soy milk or soy creamer
Beat the shortening and margarine together until well-combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the vanilla and soy milk and beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.






23 comments

  1. wow!! what e beautiful vegan cupcake!! I'm so gonna bake these as soon as possible... :) xox Amy

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    1. You totally should! They're truly delicious! Happy Baking :)

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  2. Any experience making these with almond flour? My "experiment" did not work! :) I added more baking soda but that didn't seem to help. I guess the batter was too wet and part of it basically overflowed out of the cups! It was strange. It was more of a tasty almond crumble.... I am going to try again with the all purpose flour because they look great.

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    1. Oh no!! We don't often bake with Almond flour (we are cheap like that haha). Almond flour is so dense and oily that another recipe would be better suited. Come to think of it, I haven't come across many almond flour cupcake recipes. At least it was still tasty though! Definitely try them with AP or even Gluten Free AP flour if you want them GF. Thanks for sharing your experience :)

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  3. Could you use almond milk for the frosting, instead of soy milk?

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    1. Yes you may use almond milk. We often use almond milk instead of soy. You could even use rice milk if you prefer. Enjoy Bezzie!

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  4. I just made these for my daughter's birthday...yum! I have a little one with a dairy and egg allergy and finding a nice cupcake recipe has been rough. This got the approval of both girls! We added a little color to our batter and have a lovely rainbow display. Thank you for sharing the recipe!

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    1. Yay! We are so happy to hear that your girls enjoyed and responded well to these cupcakes :) That's why we're here!

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  5. Is this correct that you use 3½ cups of powdered sugar for frosting? If I got this right this is 440g for 5 cupcakes? How many cupcakes is this recipe for anyways?

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    1. The recipe makes 12 cupcakes. If you're just looking to make enough frosting for 5 cupcakes, I would half the frosting recipe - which would be 1.75 cups of powdered sugar which is about 215 grams of powdered sugar. Hope that helps!

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  6. This could be a silly question, but do you think this recipe would hold up well as a small cake rather than cupcakes?

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    1. Your question is not at all silly! I would say that would work very well. I'm guessing it might be enough for one 8 inch cake pan or perhaps two 5 inch cake pans. We hope it works out for your little cake :)

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  7. Can you substitute coconut oil for canola?

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    1. I wouldn't recommend it because it would make the cupcakes too dense and they might not bake properly. It's something to think about for the future though because vanilla cupcakes with coconut oil would be wonderful!

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  8. Will using all margaring instead of halving in the shortening make a large difference?

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  9. No it should be fine. Perhaps just put less milk in as margarine will make for a softer frosting.

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  10. Mine came out kind of dense. Is that normal for this recipe or did I go wrong somewhere?

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    1. It might have been due to over mixing of the batter. These are actually supposed to turn out quite light and fluffy.

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    2. That is probably what happened. Thanks for the input, I'll give them another try! The taste was good, just thick. :)

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  11. Can rice or soy milk be used in replace of the almond milk for the cake recipe? My son has a nut allergy.

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    1. Yes. Any non dairy milk will work in this recipe.

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  12. I made these tonight. I don't follow a vegan lifestyle but I wanted to try a vegan cupcake recipe. This recipe was simple (hate complicated substitution) and easy. End result was delicious and most as well as light and fluffy. Will be my go to vegan cupcake recipe.

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  13. Used these for my 1 year old's birthday party and they were a hit! As I included pics on my blog, I also credited you as the recipe source. Hope that's ok! http://leaveittobrittni.blogspot.com

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