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Vegan cupcakes take over Easter

I am partial to vegan cooking. Not only is the intent of compassion one that I share, but quite honestly the food is really good! One category of vegan cuisine that I avoided was baking, until now.

As a food critic once put it, vegan desserts often seem penitential. Indeed, many of my older vegetarian and vegan cookbooks insist on making desserts wholesome by stuffing their ingredient lists with healthful choices. Seriously, who wants low fat whole wheat brownies? Not me! Desserts should flaunt refined ingredients, lots of fat, and enough sugar to concern your dentist. You should think about a good dessert often the next day, clinging to the slim hope that there is some left over yet knowing in your heart someone got up in the middle of the night and ate it.

Thankfully, in recent years vegan foodies and chefs have stepped up to the task of crafting delicious and indulgent baked goods. In Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero, and Sara Quin not only present perfectly naughty vegan cupcakes, but do so without asking you to drive thirty minutes out of your way to some natural foods store for some strange ingredient. (There are some recipes with such ingredients but their basic cupcakes are pretty simple.)

So I made their golden vanilla cupcakes with fluffy “buttercream” frosting, intending to feed them to a family of non-vegans for Easter. Since we all know that beautiful cupcakes are not necessarily tasty cupcakes, some preliminary testing was in order. My first subject was a non-vegan cupcake veteran and he was purposefully unaware that the cupcakes were anything but traditional.

Me: How did you like the cupcake?

Test subject: It was good!

Me: Did it taste like a regular cupcake?

Test subject: Yeah, why?

Me: It’s vegan.

At this point vegan-baked-good bias emerged..

Test subject: Really? I thought the cake part was a little bit different, it just didn’t taste…

Me (eyes rolling): You just said it tasted like a regular cupcake!

Test subject: I did? [eats another sample] Wow this is really good. Usually vegan stuff like this is crap.

Indeed. But I am happy to report that the cupcakes were an unqualified Easter dessert success. One small child insisted on eating two, and even an elderly taster liked them so much as to inquire about what I put into the frosting. I thought about revealing the secret of the cupcakes but then I just smiled and said, “love!”

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes

1 cup soy milk

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 ¼ cups all purpose flour

2 TBL cornstarch

¾ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt (increase to ½ tsp if you’re using oil instead of margarine)

½ cup non-hydrogenated margarine, softened, or 1/3 cup canola oil

¾ cup granulated sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp almond extract, caramel extract, or more vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside a few minutes to get good and curdled.
3. If using margarine: sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix.
4. In a separate large bowl, use a handheld mixer at medium speed to cream the margarine and sugar for about 2 minutes until light and fluffy, but don’t beat past two minutes. Beat in the vanilla and other extract, if using, then alternate beating in the soy milk mixture and dry ingredients, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl a few times.
5. If using oil: Beat together the soy milk mixture, oil, sugar, vanilla, and other extracts, if using, in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix until no large lumps remain.
6. Fill cupcake liners two thirds of the way and bake for 20 to 22 minutes until done. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting

½ cup nonhydrogenated shortening

½ cup nonhydrogenated margarine

3 ½ cup confectioners sugar, sifted

1 ½ 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 beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.

(Flowers made with Wilton fondant icing.)

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