It's been awhile since I last made cupcakes! It's been even longer since
Denise came over for one of our baking sessions. We finally got together though and after picking up ingredients and decorations, we made it back to bake a double batch of vegan red velvet cupcakes and whipped up a batch of dreamy cream cheese frosting (made with vegan butter and dairy cream cheese....). Delicious!
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| Dry ingredients in one bowl: flour, salt, baking soda |
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| Refined, white sugar. Preheat oven to 350F. |
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| Kitchen Aid action: creaming the vegan butter (stick form, not tub) and sugar together. Egg re-placer was then added shortly after |
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| A whole lot of red food colouring into cocoa powder |
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| A touch of homemade vanilla extract |
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| All mashed together, into my white kitchen's worst nightmare! |
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| Red paste being mixed into the creamed butter/sugar/egg |
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| Voila- keep beating. |
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| Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients |
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| Followed by 1/2 of the "buttermilk", repeat with flour, milk, ending with flour |
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| We picked these out from my cupcake liner collection. Circus giraffes and acrobats on bicycles, adorable. |
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| Look how pretty! It was the perfect consistency and smelt delicious. |
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| Loving my new spring loaded scoop <3 Fill 3/4 of the way up with batter. |
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| Super handy. I love kitchen gadgets! |
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| 20 minutes turned into 28 minutes in the oven. |
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| Meanwhile, it was frosting making time. Yay for 400g tubs of Philadelphia on sale for $2.88! |
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| We used vegan butter sticks, in our cream cheese frosting without even thinking. |
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| Creamed the heck out of the two for 4 minutes until it was super fluffy. |
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| Slowly incorporating in 3 1/2 - 4 cups of icing sugar to get a nice texture. |
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| Look how smooth and wonderful! I could eat this whole bowl. |
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| Cupcakes out of the oven and quick chilled thanks to the weather |
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| Nice rise, beautiful colour and perfectly leveled tops, perfect for frosting |
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| I ended up adding a touch more sugar to the frosting- found it still too loose. |
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| We were fighting for day light at this time, 4:30pm! |
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| My hand frosting "technique" |
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| Deep swirls <3 |
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| Topped with velvet crumbs and red sugar |
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| Yum! |
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| This guy got inhaled after we took this shot, as did a few others...shh. |
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| We also made 100% vegan red velvet cupcakes, using diary free canned frosting. (Thanks Duncan Hines!) |
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| Did I mention I love swirling? :P |
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| Texture shot. Moist, light, great crumb and just chocolatey enough. |
These were a total success, unlike our
last vegan baking adventure! I substituted soy milk + vinegar for buttermilk, used a starch based egg re-placer instead of chicken eggs and vegan stick butter instead of dairy butter. (Keep in mind that tub vegan margarine has a higher water content, so I try to steer away from it whenever a recipe calls for butter). Some red food colorings are not vegan as they're made from beetles, so make sure you're buying a synthetic food dye. We don't want to poison our vegan friendlies now, do we?
These were delicious. The recipe is easy and the end results are divine! I'm sure everybody will be fighting over who gets the last crumb or smear of frosting. Valentines Day is coming up and these would make a nice festive treat. Why not make a batch now to...you know, test the recipe out?
Heh, heh, hheeehehe
Cupcake recipe adapted from Brown Eyed Baker and frosting recipe adapted from All Recipes.
