Orange-Cranberry Cupcake

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries (like Craisins)
• approx. 1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
• 3/4 cup butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups flour (I’ve started using Softsilk, and I LOVE the results…try it!)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 2/3 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup milk

1. Zest two oranges (the ones that will give you your fresh juice) and set aside to be used in the frosting.

2.  In a small bowl, combine the dried cranberries and fresh orange juice (make sure there’s enough juice to cover the cranberries).  Let this soak for at least an hour.  After the cranberries have “rehydrated,” pour them and the orange juice into a food process and blend til smooth.  Measure out 1/2 a cup of this mixture and set aside.

3.  Cream together the better and sugar until well combined and fluffy.  Add and mix in each egg one at a time.  Beat in vanilla.  Alternately add dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking powder) and wet ingredients (milk and cranberries), beating after each addition just until combined.

I think I should have used a bigger bowl...

4.  Spoon batter into lined or greased cupcake tins, filling about 3/4 full.  Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 16-19 minutes.  Cool before frosting.

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

• Zest from two oranges
• 8 oz. softened cream cheese
• 3-4 cups powdered sugar

Beat the cream cheese until smooth.  Begin to add the powdered sugar until you reach a consistency and taste you like.  Beat in the orange zest.  Pipe and enjoy!

Notice the fancy baking cups :)

Pear Spiced Cupcakes

(makes 2 dozen regular or 5 dozen minis)

• 2 cups  all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons  baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon  baking soda
• 1 teaspoon  ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon  ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon  ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon  ground ginger
• 1/4 cup  butter or margarine, softened
• 1/4 cup  shortening
• 1-1/2 cups  sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon  vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cups  buttermilk or sour milk*
• 1 cup  pureed pears (about 2 pears)

First, take two ripe pears and dice them into small pieces.  In a food processor or blender, puree them until they are an applesauce-like consistency.

In a large mixing bowl beat butter and shortening with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until well combined.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.

Add dry mixture (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices), buttermilk and applesauce alternately to beaten mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined.

Spoon into lined cupcake pans filling each to about 3/4.  Bake at 350 degrees for 16-18 minutes for regular sized cupcakes or 11-13 minutes for minis.  Let cool before frosting.

Spiced Frosting

Alter a regular cream cheese frosting: blend together 1 8-oz package of cream cheese until smooth.  Add powdered sugar until your reach a stiff consistency (about 2-3 cups).  Pour in 1 tbsp of milk.  Adjust texture with more powdered sugar, if needed.  Spice with nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger to taste.  Pipe onto cooled cupcakes

The cupcake! Look at the fancy baking cup!

My fair/damp/slightly mildewed city has reached the time of year before it’s cloudy for basically three months running, but the lack of cloud cover makes for really chilly nights.  The days have this absurdly beautiful crisp fall weather with a few wisps of clouds floating overhead; a cool, bright light; and a gorgeous blue sky I can’t remember ever seeing when I lived in the Inland Empire.  I’m sorry for making you read through an overly-descriptive paragraph that has nothing to do with the actual cupcakes, but only partially because it is beautiful in the Willamette Valley right now.

I’ve never actually had hot buttered rum, but they were the request, so I did research.  And by “research,” I mean I googled “hot buttered rum cupcakes” so I could see if anyone has done it before and with what success.  The takeaway from that link was the browned butter frosting.  It tastes fantastically like toffee and even if it doesn’t really taste like what buttered rum would taste like IT IS SO DELICIOUS. Ye vegans, please note that earth balance has some browning possibilities, so these are still a possibility for you.

The ingredients!

1 cup of milk/non-dairy milk, minus 2 tablespoons
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons dark rum
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon dark molasses (I’m not sold on what this does, but it does turn the color of the cupcakes into a richer brown, so you can forgo it, but it’s awesome for presentation purposes)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Squirtle is unsettled by this baking business

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line your tins.

Curdle Almond Milk. Yes, I'm reusing some of the photos.

Add the vinegar to the milk/non-dairy milk and allow to curdle.  In the meantime, beat together the butter and sugar; wait to beat in the molasses until the sugar and butter are mostly combined (I think this makes the molasses easier to beat in).  Then mix in the vanilla.

My assistant, assisting.

My lovely assistant helped mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and powder, spices, salt) while I was beating the sugar and butter.

Beating the brown sugar into the butter.

Now, whisk in the curdled milk, and add the rum.

Gloop gloop.

If the oven is hot enough, mix together the flour mixture with the liquid mixture.  Since there is no egg in these cupcakes, they depend almost exclusively on the chemical leavening of the baking soda and powder.  That means that waiting until you’re ready to put the cupcakes in the oven to mix the liquid ingredients with the dry makes for the fluffiest cupcakes.

Anyways, mix them together, fill the baking cups about 2/3-3/4 full, and bake for 20-24 minutes.

Browning the butter

I’m convinced the frosting is what makes these a winner, and much thanks to Cupcake Rehab for the recipe (which was hardly modified, honestly).

1/2 cup butter, softened
2-3 cupcakes powdered sugar
1 tablespoon rum
1 teaspoon vanilla

Browning butter is fairly simply, really. What it amounts to is gently slightly burning the fat in butter after melting it.  It’s not too dissimilar from clarifying butter and then toasting it.

Anyhow, it’s easy.  For this frosting, take 1/4 cup of butter and melt it over medium heat and stir frequently with a spatula (mine is silicone, so no worries for me.  I don’t really know how rubber does, however).

It will start browning and smelling delicious, but when to pull it off the heat is a little subjective.  I waited until it seemed like it was well but not thoroughly browned because I didn’t want it burned.  It should look like there are little flakes of brown in the pan with a slightly foamy liquid floating on top of a clear layer.

Browned butter beaten with the softened butter, and a plop of powdered sugar.

Pull it off the heat and allow it to cool.  Once it has cooled, beat it with the remaining 1/4 cup of softened butter until mixed.  Then slowly beat in the powdered sugar in 1/2 cup increments.  After the first two 1/2 cups, add the vanilla and rum and mix in, and then continue with the powdered sugar.  As always, manage the texture with a little more milk or rum and powdered sugar until it reaches about the texture for what you need.

drizzlin'

We also made a buttery rum syrup to drizzle over the tops of these cupcakes.  I’m feeling too lazy to actually copy it here, so I’m just going to link to it.

Old-Fashioneds

A little while ago, my friend from the first red velvet attempt texted me, saying she thought that Old Fashioneds would be delicious cupcakes, and that we should make them.  As it turns out, she’s been watching Mad Men, and not checking out the To Do List.

An Old Fashioned is bitters and bourbon, muddled with a little sugar, a cherry, and maybe an orange slice.  I had one last time I was in San Francisco, and I still have mixed feelings about.  These cupcakes (and the old fashioneds my baking assistant and I made) were definitely a more pleasant experience.  Sadly, I forgot to grab the cherries I had in the freezer from my adventures to Hood River, so these aren’t quite what were in mind when Old Fashioned’s cupcakes were suggested.  But hey, it leaves room for updated deliciousness in the future.

For reference, this is a pretty standard vanilla cupcake, but instead of vanilla and almond extract, I added a tablespoon or two of bourbon and blood orange bitters (we had the offer of blood orange bitters, which I jumped on because my drink of choice–a whiskey sour–involves no bitters, so I had no real incentive to buy any).

My cocktail prissiness aside, whiskey makes delicious cupcakes.  The blood orange bitters give the cupcakes a Blue Sky Cola kind of flavor, and I can’t decide whether or not I like it.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch (I recently figured out that the cornstarch makes the AP flour into, sort of, cake flour, which means it’s less likely to form gluten, and thus more likely to have a tender crumb.  That is, the corn starch is actually important).
1 cup almond milk minus 3 tablespoons.
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1-2 tablespoons bitters
2-3 tablespoons of bourbon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line the muffin tins.

Curdle the almond milk/non dairy milk of choice with the apple cider vinegar.  In case anyone was wondering, this is what the curdled non-dairy milk will likely look like:

Curdle Almond Milk

Mix the sugar into the butter, beating until thoroughly combined.  Then, pour in a tablespoon or two of bitters, and 2-3 tablespoons of bourbon, and beat into the sugar/margarine mixture.

Before the Bitters and Bourbon

At this point, what I do is mix together the dry ingredients (the flour, cornstarch, salt, baking soda and baking powder, and any spices I feel like using).

My assistant, assisting.

Now it is time to mix the curdled non-dairy milk with the margarine/sugar mixture.  It’ll look lumpy.

Yeeeup. Looks lumpy.

Whisk that together.  Once it gets as mixed as it is going to get mixed, dump in the flour mixture, and whisk together until mixed, but not over-mixed.

I recently bought really fancy baking cupcakes from a Canadian business, Goldas Kitchen.  I could probably find these locally, but it was a significantly better deal to order them from Canada.

My new, fancy cupcake liners.

Anyways, fill your cupcake liners (pretty or plain) 2/3-3/4 of the way full, and bake 20-24 minutes.

The frosting is a standard buttercream (1/2 cup margarine with as much 2-3 cups of powdered sugar beaten in) with a couple tablespoons of whiskey and bitters mixed in.

My assistant frosting the cupcakes.

These also have a whiskey syrup drizzled over the top.

1/4 cup whiskey
1 tablespoon margarine
3 tablespoons sugar

Heat the whiskey and sugar on medium heat.  Once the sugar has melted, stir until  and cook for a few more minutes.  Once it has been steaming for a few minutes, take it off heat and stir in the margarine.  Let it cool, and then spoon over the tops.

In other news, I’m bored with being sick.  NEXT.

cupcakes, complete and covered in rum syrup.

I have an enormous bottle of rum.  I guess it’s really not that enormous, but rum isn’t something I drink with any great frequency.  Thus, the only use this rum has seen has been in cupcakes.  Upon deciding (I really have been hitting the 19th century literature hard the last few weeks) I was well enough to bake again, I decided on rum cupcakes.  With ginger.  Some preliminary research on the subject brought me to the idea of a Dark and Stormy, which fits very well into my theory that cocktails make fine inspiration for baked goods.

(Note to the purists:  I did not buy Goslings.  I have a budget for my cupcake and drinking forays, I already have rum, and it’s a pain to get to the liquor store.)

Anyways.

This is the aforelinked recipe, modified to be vegan, and modified to produce only 12 normal-sized cupcakes or 24 mini-cupcakes.  Before you get started, you should note that this is a split-batter recipe, and because it is for such a small quantity of cupcakes, it might be slightly more challenging.  Just a note.

Ingredients! (from left, cinnamon, bottle of rum, non-dairy milks, etc)

Ingredients, Light Rum Batter:

1/2 cup soy or non-dairy milk, minus 1 tablespoon (that’s to maintain the liquid ratios when I add the rum)
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon dark rum
5/8 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup margarine
3/8 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla  extract
1 tablespoon lemon zest  (zest from one lemon, doesn’t really matter how large it is)

Fresh lemon zest

Ingredients, Dark Ginger Batter:

1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 ounce fresh ginger, finely minced
5/8 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/8 cup sugar
1 tablespoon dark molasses
1/4 cup margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ounce of fresh ginger

Hokay.  Note: small to medium bowls are what will be needed here.  It doesn’t especially matter which batter you start first, just know that for the sake of good texture, each batter should probably happen in roughly these steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line the cupcake tins.

2. Add the apple cider vinegar to the non-dairy milk, and allow to curdle.  I was lazy and did all the milk at once; it is easy enough to pour only 1/2 cup of the milk into each batter.

3. Sift together the rum batter’s flour ingredients:

• 5/8 cup flour,
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Set aside.

4. Beat together the rum batter’s margarine and sugar until smooth.  Then beat in the teaspoon vanilla extract.  Add the 1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon of curdled soy milk, lemon zest, and 1 tablespoon of rum.

5. Mix and set aside.

The "light" rum batter, partially mixed.

Now it’s time to move onto the dark ginger batter.

6. Sift together the rum batter’s flour ingredients:

• 5/8 cup flour,
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  

  Rainbow bowls of ingredients! Clockwise from the foreground red bowl: Spices; baking soda, baking powder, salt and corn starch; vanilla; baking soda etc; ginger; and lemon zest.

Set aside.

7. Beat together the margarine and sugar until smooth, and then add the tablespoon of molasses and teaspoon of vanilla.

Adding molasses to the "dark" ginger half of the batter.

Mix together, beat in the minced fresh ginger then add the remaining 1/2 cup of curdled soy milk.

8. Now the the liquid halves of the batter are ready, mix the dry ingredient bowls into their respective wet bowls (spiced flour with the dark batter bowl, un-spiced flour with the rum batter).

9. Hooray!  Now we’re ready to plop the batter into the cups.  I used a mini-cupcake pan, so I took a soup spoon and filled each liner about 1/3-1/2 full with dark batter, then filled the liners with light batter (the cups should be full to about 1/6 of the top of the liner.

Bake the cupcakes for about 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

The frosting is vegan cream cheese frosting.  Seriously, I don’t think I’ll ever buy more of that; it’s a little terrifying.  I found an old container in the fridge for when I was still interning (4 months ago!) and it was as fresh and mold-free as when I first opened it.  Real food *spoils*.  This did not.

Ingredients for Vegan Rummy Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese (Never again!  I mean, unless I can find something less creepy.  That spoils.  Real food spoils!  Even dried grains eventually stop being good, and a spread?  A spread should spoil.)
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon rum

Cream together the margarine and cream cheese, and them beat in some powdered sugar.  Add the rum, and beat until combined.  Then add powdered sugar until the frosting is stiff enough to work with.

Frost the cupcakes, and eat.  Yay sugar!

completed cupcakes!

Note: I made rum syrup to drizzle on top.  It was a good decision.

But.

I WILL BE BACK AND I WILL BE BACK WITH FANCY BAKING CUPS.  THEY ARE EXTREMELY FANCY.

That was meant to convey shouting, for all you caps-lock haters.  They are *very* fancy baking cups.

Also, I apologize completely for the total lack of quality in the pictures!  I couldn’t find my camera and had to use my cell phone :-\

Margarita Cupcakes – makes 12 cupcakes, or 2 1/2 dozen minis
(adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World)

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the egg and blend just until combined.  Add the  lime juice, lime zest, milk, tequila,  and vanilla.

In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add to lime mixture and stir until just combined. Divide evenly into muffin tins.

Bake for 20-24 minutes (14-15 minutes for mini cupcakes), until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed.
Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Tequila and Lime Frosting

Cream together butter, milk, lime juice, tequila, and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar. Add in more sugar as needed to make frosting stiff, but spreadable.
Spread on cupcakes and roll the edges in a small amount of coarse, colored sugar, poured into a small bowl, so it’s easy to direct it.

The cupcakes are so pretty.

I may or may not have a sinus infection.  However, I appear to be getting better (that is, don’t constantly feel like I’m going to fall over and/or vomit).  Hooray!  I have joined the legions complaining about minor (mine is) illness on the internet.  Anyways: cupcakes.

After a fascinating glimpse in the grinding and ill-oiled bureaucratic machinery of a college, a friend of mine has officially graduated.  She likes rum.  She likes coconut.  She likes coffee.  All of these things?  All of them?  They go together REALLY well.

1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons corn starch
3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon coffee extract (other things that might work: Starbucks Via powder combined with a tablespoon of hot water, other instant coffee combined with a tablespoon of hot water, concentrated espresso.   Straight-up coffee won’t do.)
1 teaspoon coconut extract (not 100% necessary, but important for flavor)
2 tablespoons of  dark rum

Flavors!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line your tins, and put the apple cider vinegar in the coconut milk.

Beat together the margarine and sugar (really, by this point, you all should be able to recite the basic rules o’ cupcakes in your sleep.  I know I can make cupcakes without a recipe in front of me, now.)

extracts and stuff.

Once the sugar and  margarine have been mixed (but not over-mixed), beat in your extracts/extract approximations/liquor.

Once the flavorings are evenly distributed in the margarine!sugar mixture, add the coconut milk/apple cider vinegar mixture.  A whisk is probably necessary at this point.

Yup. Goop.

Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder, and mix that into the liquid goop that is the other combined ingredients.  The coconut milk will make the batter very thick, but don’t worry about it.

Fill the cupcake liners 2/3-3/4 full, and bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick poked in the middle comes out clean (no crumbs!).

The frosting is coconut cream cheese, again:

1/4 cup cream cheese (vegan or non-vegan, whatever floats your dietary boat)
1/4 cup margarine (seriously, earth balance is far easier to work with than butter)
a few tablespoons of coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3ish cups powdered sugar

Beat together the cream cheese and margarine until smooth and well mixed.  Mix in the vanilla and a tablespoon of coconut milk, and then mix in the powdered sugar in 1/2 cup increments.  Use the coconut milk to thin out the frosting as you progress, and try to end up with a frosting texture that is stiff enough to hold its shape but not so stiff that you can’t pipe or spread it onto the cupcakes.

That is far more text in a clump than you should tolerate.  Here, a picture:

These aren't actually these cupcakes, but seriously, that was way too much text.

Anyways, the final en-awesomifying of these cupcakes is a rum syrup, which is taken almost verbatim from VCTOTW, the same one I adapted for the Vanilla Bourbon cupcakes.

1/4 cup dark rum
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons margarine

Simmer together the rum and sugar until the sugar is full dissolved, and let cook together for a minute longer.  Pull off heat, and mix in the vanilla and margarine until the margarine is fully melted.

aaaand cupcakes.

Once the syrup has cooled to just above room temperature, drizzle it on top of the frosted cupcakes, and serve relatively soon (the syrup might start crystallizing and stop tasting so deliciously of rum).

Happy Graduation!

Why, yes, that is a microwave older than me in the background.

There was a sale on bulk spices earlier this week (the same kind of sale that lead me to buy cocoa nibs that lead to these red velvet cupcakes) and I stocked up.  The only really *new* thing I bought during the sale was garam masala.  Garam masala is actually just the name of a sort of style of spice mix–it can be any combination of a number of different spices.  The kind I bought, however, has a combination of cloves, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, cardamom, and pepper, and maybe a few other things I’m not 100% sure on.

Though I know some people have declared that savory flavors in cupcakes is weird, I like it, and I like it as much as I like sour flavors in cupcakes.  I feel like the savory/sweet and sour/sweet combinations work well because of the contrast, playing counterpoint to each other.

Um.  I don’t suspect anyone really cares to hear me ramble about flavor combinations much longer, so into the recipe we go!This is a variation on VCTOTW’s basic vanilla cupcake, with a few notable changes.

1 cup coconut milk (don’t question me, just do it!)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons corn starch
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp Garam Masala

As always, line your tins and preheat the over.

Now that that’s done, measure out one cup of coconut milk, and drop a teaspoon or two of apple cider vinegar into it, along with a teaspoon or two of the garam masala and stir until combined evenly.

Mixing the garam masala into the coconut milk.

In this situation, the vinegar will not really curdle the milk, but it will give the batter a slightly higher acidity to react with the baking powder and soda to leaven the cupcakes slightly better.

Yeee-haw chemistry!

Yeeeeah.  Um.  Anyways.

In a medium to large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar until smooth, and then beat in the vanilla.  In a different bowl, sift together the flour, corn starch, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Now that we have three different containers (coconut milk goop, margarinesugar goop, and the “dry” ingredients) we can proceed.

You can kind of see my feet here.

The coconut milk will make the batter remarkably thick, so my method to deal with it was to add about 2/3 of the coconut milk to the margarine bowl, and whisk until combined (it won’t look pretty–a little chunky, but that’s okay, I promise).  Then add about 2/3 of the flour mixture and mix until there isn’t dry flour obviously in the bowl.  Add the remaining milk, stir gently, and then mix in the remaining flour.

The batter will be too thick to pour; I had to use a 1/3 cup to scoop up a bit and drop it into the pan.

The centers didn't fall! Hooray!

Because of the texture, they’ll also take slightly longer to cook properly, between 22 and 26 minutes.  Keep an eye on them.

The frosting is a pretty normal cream cheese frosting using the extra coconut milk to thin the frosting, altogether easily made vegan.  I chose the cream cheese  because I really like cream cheese frosting, mostly, but also because I was trying to get at the savory flavors a little more.  That, and a buttercream seemed kinda bland and gross.

yon cupcakes

I really liked the way these cupcakes turned out; they look clean and fresh and have an excellent crumb.  I might make it 1.5 or 2 teaspoons garam masala instead of one, but it leaves a mild flavor in the mouth, and the coconut cream cheese frosting provides a subtle creamy note without overwhelming.  I think at least another half teaspoon of the garam masala, though.

The chopped up walnuts don't work too well with my frosting tips, so it got glopped on.

Two things of relative import: I do believe we have reached our one year blogaversay!  Yay!  It has been a very very delicious year, and it is very VERY exciting to go from being excited that we hit 20 hits in a day to averaging about 100 hits every day.  So, thanks!  It is pretty fabulous.

Thing two: Oh sweet sweet merciful weather gods, it is hot here.  Hot and sticky sticky humid.  Thus, no baking, and I’m slowing down posting to stretch out my current queue.

Anyhow, while Mels was visiting a few weeks ago, I made Vanilla Bourbon Cupcakes with the Toasted Walnut Cream Cheese Frosting…and it was every bit as delicious as it sounds.

I’m not going to include the recipe as I baked it, because the centers fell because I added too much bourbon.

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk minus two tablespoons
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup earth balance margarine
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla

2 tablespoons bourbon (I used Jim Beam because a subtlety of flavor wasn’t very important and wouldn’t really come through the cupcakes)

Preheat the over to 350 and line the cupcake tin, and whisk the soy milk and vinegar and let it sit and get curdled.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl and mix.

Sifting together the dry ingredients.

Cream together the margarine and sugar until fluffy and well mixed, and then mix in the vanilla extract and the bourbon.

mixing in extracts and bourbon

The instructions say to alternate beating in the flour mixture and soy milk mixture, an instruction I occasionally follow.  Because I used margarine and not oil, it doesn’t make sense to NOT follow it–you can’t really mix things together properly if you don’t.

Once you’ve smoothed most of the lumps, fill the cupcake liners 2/3-3/4 of the way full and bake for 20-22 minutes until a knife poked in the middle comes out clean.

Frosting!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup earth balance margarine
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnut halves

I love this frosting.  LOVE it.  It is without a doubt one of the best frostings I have ever had.

Toast the walnut halves by putting them in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat (I don’t have one, so I just used a normal pan and kept an eagle-eye on the burning situation).  This should take 5 minutes. Once they start smelling extra delicious and getting a little browned.  Let them cool and chop finely.

Beat together the margarine and cream cheese until just combined.  Beat in the powdered sugar in 1/3-1/2 cup batches, until smooth and creamy.  Then, add the vanilla and fold in the chopped walnuts.

The finishing touch on this is a bourbon glaze, which I easily adapted from the Rum Glaze in VCTOTW.

1/4 cup bourbon
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons margarine

Simmer the rum and sugar over medium low heat.  Once the sugar has dissolved and has started bubbling.  Reduce heat and cook for another couple minutes, then remove from heat, stir in the margarine and vanilla.  Once it has cooled a little, spoon over the cupcakes.

Cupcake of deliciousness.

Seriously, these are REALLY good.