Wow, that's a mouthful! Yesterday
Denise and I had a baking session at my house. It was long awaited, after being rescheduled several times over, but it happened! It was today.
Before any baking magic happened, lunch was first. I pulled out a box of
Dr. Oetker's Panebello frozen pizza and shoved it in my mini oven. 10 minutes later, out came a perfectly done pizza with a nice crispy bottom and gooey cheese. We chose the 'Classic Canadian" variety and washed it down with a can of Coke Zero. Yum! It's not thin crust by any means- this pizza's got some heft to it but at the same time it's not dense. It's pretty perfect in terms of the frozen stuff. Try it!
After much debating and back and fourth idea swapping, we settled on cupcakes. We are budget baking here, folks! Plus cupcakes are photogenic in nature and fun to eat. Lets move along now...
Preheat your oven to 350F!
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All purpose flour |
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Corn starch |
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Baking powder |
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Salt |
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Sift |
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I suggest using a bowl of equal or larger size than your sifter or you'll end up with much of your dry mix on the table! |
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Separate bowl, add oil |
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Sugar |
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Pictures for the blog |
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Homemade vanilla extract |
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Yum |
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Butterscotch-y |
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"cream" |
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Soy milk Water and vinegar (fresh out of soy milk, it happens!) |
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Dry into wet |
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Mix |
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Mix some more |
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Line with liners, use fancy cute ones for extra fancy cuteness |
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We had space of 12 but only enough batter for 11 |
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Fill each liner 2/3rd of the way up |
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The batter smells heavenly! |
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It tastes good too. Into the oven for about 15 minutes or until done. |
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Meanwhile, play with cute pets |
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Take a walk outside... |
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...and find Tank spying out the window. |
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It's vegan butter cream time! |
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I would have preferred legit vegan "butter" but they were out. We made do without. |
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+ brown sugar syrup |
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Vanilla bean |
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Vanilla caviar <3 |
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Incorporate |
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Powdered sugar, sifted |
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Whip |
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Check out those yummy little specks! |
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We said it was going to be a latté cupcake, didn't we? |
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That's coffee, not blood or other questionable bodily liquids. This isn't The Help. We aren't baking Minny's chocolate pie, here. Whip. |
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Finished butter cream |
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Cooled |
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A generous dollop and swirl until your heart's content |
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Sprinkling of course raw sugar |
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Like little gems |
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It's missing something... |
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...a chocolate covered espresso bean! |
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Tester with being drizzled with brown sugar caramel. Not so good. |
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Tank wondering what smells so good |
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The inside |
Overall, not a bad recipe but not perfect either! Vegan vanilla cakes are always a tough one, unfortunately. I'd like to try the version using v.butter instead of oil for comparison though and perhaps not making any substitutions. Read: water for soy milk.
Get the recipe
here. The recipe is from the book,
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. There is no recipe for the butter cream - butter, vanilla/extracts, powdered sugar and soy milk! Despite the texture of the cupcakes not being 100%, they were pretty close. The flavours were there and the butter cream was super tasty!
Denise ended up staying for dinner - I'll post about that tomorrow. :)
I had a blast. I hope the cupcakes made it back to your place safely!
What will we bake next time?