Rose Swirl Vegan Cupcakes

So tonight was a surprise birthday dinner for Miss G, who must have been feeling the "unlove" when Mr T's birthday party has been in discussion for several weeks. Somehow Mr M managed to get her to the meeting point without her finding out, though it did require a flurry of deliberately misleading messages and a pretend phone call.

After cajoling Mr M into being allowed to make cake for the occasion, the request was for a dozen cupcakes, with mixed flavours if we had the time - that would allow Mr M to focus on getting a JLO friendly dessert (egg, dairy and peanut allergy). I thought I'd save him the trouble and decided to try vegan cupcakes in all different flavours, and made a base batter to which I then divided up in 3 parts and added different flavours - lemon / strawberry, coffee, and banana. I also wanted a chocolate one as well and a bit of googling for an egg-free recipe resulted in a number of pages with chocolate avocado cupcake recipes (weird but good!), so I started made these as well. Finally I was super excited to have an opportunity to test my Wilton 2D, and I think the roses came out pretty well.



As if this wasn't enough, I had a sudden panic that all up I only had just enough for 12 cupcakes and 4 mini samples of the banana flavoured one, which meant that I couldn't really go through and taste test the rest of the flavours. I'm usually pretty confident with my regular baking but vegan? The niggling feeling in the back of my mind that it might be a bit too floury, too sugary, not cook properly ... a whole host of potential unexplored issues could come up and I'd be completely stuffed. Solution? Whip up a batch of regular red velvet cupcakes from a tried and tested recipe just in case.

I've made vegan cupcakes a couple of times now but I must admit that a) I don't know much about vegan baking; and b) recipes often call for unconventional ingredients - I can't imagine that I'll be using a whole lot of xantham gum, agave nectar, ener-G egg replacer ... etc. all the time. I think my biggest fear (which I probably should just get over) is not being able to get the cake to rise properly and it being too dense and heavy, and I have found that soy milk also sometimes gives a strange aftertaste. The recipe I ended up using was the most uncomplicated vegan one I could find as a base batter (i.e. vanilla). Here's my adaptation of Lauren's latest recipe (makes 9-12 cupcakes depending on the size of the pan):

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter substitute (I used Pure Sunflower which whips surprisingly well - if you are making cupcakes for someone with a dairy allergy make sure you check the ingredients as olive spread / margarine / i can't believe its not butter often has dairy in it).


• 3/4 cup caster sugar


• Spoon of vanilla


• 1 cup soy milk + 1 teaspoon vinegar (I don't think it matters if you use white / red etc. I only had rice vinegar in the house and that was fine)


• 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• Salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Line a muffin tin with paper liners and set aside.


2. In a large bowl, cream butter substitute with sugar. Stir in vanilla extract.


3. Stir soy milk together with vinegar. Set aside to curdle.


4. In a separate bowl, measure out dry ingredients and stir to incorporate.


5. Alternate stirring in wet and dry ingredients beginning and ending with dry.


6. Bake 15-20 minutes or until very lightly browned and toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting

Mr T always makes the frosting so I'm never entirely sure about the quantities. However, the Pure Sunflower worked as well as regular butter - simply whip this up and when the colour has lightened and its fluffy, add icing sugar and keep beating until its icing consistency. Flavour however you want (I made mocha flavour using cocoa powder and a teaspoon of instant coffee mixed with a tiny bit of water [a spoon or two at most], and lemon flavour by adding lemon juice). If this seems too soft to pipe then there's two troubleshooting options to stiffen it up: 1) put it in the fridge; or 2) beat in a small spoon of cornflour.

There's no secret to piping buttercream roses like this; all you need is the magic Wilton 2D or 1M tip (its the one on the left hand picture) and pipe starting from the middle and move in a circular motion outwards. There's a great tutorial by Bella Cupcakes if you're interested in technique. My Wilton 2D came with my piping tip set (see post here).



I made the mass of star looking things (the mocha frosting) using the Wilton 108 tip. These weren't particularly tidy for my standards; I think I was so tired by then since it was 1am on a school night that I was incapable of controlling my piping bag as well as I would have liked.



 

Verdict

We sang Happy Birthday to Miss G and everyone took a cupcake. Mr T tried the lemon vegan cake and it was surprisingly good! Since I had overcatered yet again, our porter was more than happy to relieve us of some cupcakes so I can only assume they looked appetising enough to eat. Think I had better investigate the vegan baking option so I'm less panicked next time round...