Carrot Cake Cupcakes, A Picture Tour

Yesterday my friend Duvi and I




baked vegan carrot cake cupcakes for the celebration of the birth of this fine gentleman (who is looking very pleased in this pic, quite possibly because he's SURROUNDED BY SOME OF THE FINEST, MOST DELICIOUS WOMEN IN CLEVELAND--just sayin'):




We grated and spooned...




and baked and frosted...




And sweat our asses off with our efforts.

And the end result was these little beauties:




Which were taken to a very drunken karaoke night. The cupcakes impressed many, especially when folks found out they were vegan. The birthday boy had at least three, and one of his friends very sheepishly but voraciously also came back for thirds.

Eaters of the cupcakes:





In total, 11 were consumed and the twelfth actually knocked my friend Duvi over in her chair, SPLITTING THE BACK OF THE CHAIR IN TWO.

Broken chair:




Them's some fucking POWERFUL cupcakes is what I'm saying.

Try them. Just buckle yourself in first.




Carrot Cake Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:

• 2/3 c. all-purpose flour


• 3/4 t. baking soda


• 1/4 t. baking powder


• 1/4 t. pinch of salt


• 1/4 t. ground cinnamon


• 1/4 t. ground ginger


• 2/3 c. sugar


• 1/3 c. vegetable oil


• 1/3 c. soy yogurt (plain or vanilla)


• 1 t. vanilla


• 1 c. finely grated carrots


• 1/4 c. of chopped walnuts


• 1/4 c. raisins

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350°. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners (preferably the kickass ones you found at Heinen that have piratey skulls & crossbones all over them).

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together sugar, vegetable oil, yogurt, and vanilla. Sift in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices) and mix until smooth. Fold in carrots , walnuts, and raisins.

Spray the cupcake liners with nonstick baking spray. Fill the liners two-thirds full (don’t overfill! See photos above). Bake for 26 to 28 minutes (for full size) or 20 minutes (for mini), until a toothpick inserted through the center of one comes out clean.

Once fully cooled, top generously with cream cheese frosting.



Cream Cheese Frosting

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/4 c. margarine, softened


• 1/4 c. vegan cream cheese, softened


• 2 c. confectioners sugar


• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Cream together margarine and cream cheese until just combined. Use a handheld mixer to whip while adding the confectioners sugar in 1/2 cup batches. Mix until smooth and creamy, then mix in vanilla. Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use.

(Recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule, reposted at Simply Sifted)

Mocha in Your Mouth Cupcakes

I made a batch of "Mocha in Your Mouth Cupcakes" for a friend this weekend and, despite an unfortunate mishap (I suddenly realized, after spraying all the cupcake cups and pouring in the batter, that my canola-oil spray for some godforsaken reason has *BUTTER* in it), this was hands down the best cupcake-batter recipe I've made. The frosting was a bit iffier (though it was, in fact, tasty) simply because it ended up being excessively soupy and oozing its way off the cupcakes, despite my best efforts at keeping it congealed by refrigerating them. But the cake itself, holy mother.

And funny thing is, I had my doubts after I mixed together all the ingredients and the batter WAS AS THIN AS WATER. I kid you not. I thought, how in god's name is this gonna bake into cupcakes and not just turn into an absolute mush? But they came out perfect--moist and wonderful.

I fed the non-vegan batch to my non-vegan friends and gave the cupcakes I managed to salvage (the 2nd batch which I didn't spray with the damn non-vegan oil) to my vegan friend, and I got a buttload of compliments on them. Every compliment I received entailed the words "so moist," which is, of course, a good thing when it comes to cake. And most everyone exclaimed that you couldn't tell the difference between these cupcakes and non-vegan ones, one friend actually stated that they tasted store-bought.

So hats off to Alysia Angel and this kick-ass cupcake recipe (you can read more about her and her bakery HERE).

And my apologies for the unflattering picture--this cupcake looks shocked, like someone snapped a picture of it when it was just getting out of the shower and hadn't yet had time to cover itself up with the towel.

Cupcake Batter

• 2 cups brown sugar


• 1 3/4 cups unbleached flour


• 3/4 cup cocoa


• 2 teaspoons baking soda


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 cup milk or soy milk


• 1/2 cup canola oil


• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract


• 2 tablespoons white vinegar


• 1 cup boiling water


• Espresso beans or chocolate-covered espresso beans for garnish, if desired

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake tins with paper liners. Combine dry ingredients in large mixing bowl. Add milk or soy milk, oil, vanilla and vinegar. Mix about 2 minutes at high speed. Stir in boiling water until incorporated. Pour batter into lined tins, filling each three-quarters full. Bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely. Frost and garnish if desired.

Serves 20.

Frosting

• 1/2 cup margarine or butter, at room temperature


• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar


• 1/4 cup espresso or strong coffee, room temperature

Combine all ingredients, and beat on high speed until light and fluffy. (You only actually need about a half-batch of the frosting to frost the 20 cupcakes from the above recipe.)

Drunken Chocolate Cupcakes

This weekend was the absolute pits when it came to baking.

My goal was to whip up a batch of cupcakes from a veganized version of this beer-cake recipe, but that failed miserably when half-way through the baking cycle, the cupcakes fell, ending up looking like pitted teenage acne.

I blame the Brits. The recipe was originally written using the *good god why?!?!?!* metric system. I double-checked, and all my conversions were accurate. So I'm not sure why this baking adventure turned out so miserably--that makes it even more irritating, not knowing why the hell you f-ed up. I should've taken a picture, but in my disgust, I didn't think of it until every single last cupcake was tanked in the garbage.

VERDICT: F (for Fucking Brits! Kidding kidding. =)

Instead, I whipped up a batch of the faustess cupcakes recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. Thankfully these worked out a bit better, though I still had a couple of complaints: they were small cupcakes, and they stuck to the sides of the little cupcake paper-cups, despite me spraying oil on them. Meh.

I frosted them, however, with the chocolate stout icing recipe from the worlds worst Brit cupcakes ever. Instead of using 50-55% cocoa solids, I used semi-sweet morsels (not sure what the ratio is on those). I recommend substituting out some of the sugar in the recipe if you choose to do this... They came out sweet sweet:

For the icing:

1/2 c. icing sugar, sifted

1/4 c. soft vegan butter

2 tablespoons stout

1/2 c. dark chocolate (50-55% cocoa solids)

1/8 c. walnut pieces, finely chopped

Did I mention that I was trying to bake these cupcakes for a friend's birthday? Yeah. So when they kept getting f-ed up, color me upset.

I *did* decorate them with (well-cleaned) beer caps though, which was fun.

VERDICT: C

Not super-satisfied, I decided to whip up a batch of the Best Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies EVER!, but color my day suck-ass, because somehow or another, they didn't expand in the oven like the first time round (they stayed the same tiny size) and they came out completely dry and tasting weirdly flavorless and cocoa-y. Yet again, I have no clue why seeing as they were yumtastic just a few days ago--the only thing I can think of is that a) it's all about the soy milk (the original recipe calls for just water, but I used soy milk the first time around when they came out yumtastic) or b) I f-ed up the first time around in my favor and used baking soda instead of baking powder--I'm not sure about this but will have to experiment.

VERDICT: F

I think I may need a couple weeks off of baking.

You heard me.