The Handsomest Cupcake in the World: Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Toasted Black Walnut Cream Cheese Filling and a Dark Chocolate Ganache Topping

you're the prettiest cupcake in the room, the whole wide room

These are really really handsome cupcakes.  They look fancy, I know, and deep on the inside, they are even fancier.

That is, these are the long-promised Heart Attack Cupcakes, which are incredibly chocolatey in 2.5 ways, and have a cream cheese frosting filling.  And by “have a cream cheese frosting filling,” I mean they have a fancy fancy toasted organic black walnut vegan cream cheese filling, because I am just that gosh-darn awesome.

The “frosting” is actually the thick concoction of chocolate, soy milk, a wee bit of margarine, and patience that is sometimes called “ganache.”

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Cardamom Chocolate Coffee Vegan Gluten-Free Cupcakes

Gluten-free and tasty

They sound kind of ridiculous, I know, I know.  I reported my progress on them, and was then a little embarrassed.

I was honestly not expecting much from these cupcakes; how does one have a cupcake without gluten forming the spongy backbone of it?

And the answer is, apparently, that you make do with a variety of other flours, all of which are readily available due to the existence of Bob’s Red Mill, a local milling company that is pretty much every kind of cool you can imagine.

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Vegan Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

I took an inadequate number of pictures.

My goodness, I am really behind on life.  Like, really behind.  This is last weekend’s post that I’m just getting to!

Gosh.  Cupcakemakerfail2010.

ANYHOW.  I have an audience for vegan cupcakes, so I’m back to vegan form for another stretch, this time with MEXICAN HOT CHOCOLATE cupcakes.  I mean, I also had half of a can of coconut milk that needed a home in a baked good, so that totally worked out for me.

I modified the recipe to fit the ingredients on hand, and they turned out to be remarkably delightful.

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Vegan Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes with Coffee Coconut Buttercream Frosting

Ain't it pretty?

Two things of note: I had a job interview, and I have recently discovered the wonder and joy of Coconut in it’s myriad forms.

Previously, coconut had been almost entirely experienced as dried chewy chunks from the baking aisle that had been sprinkled onto sugar cookies, and I didn’t know that coconut could be AMAZING.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes!

Chocolate Chip Cookies are an American treat!  Why not turn them into a cupcake?  Originally, I wanted to figure out how to set a cookie dough bomb in the middle of the cupcake, but my depleted mental capabilities (it’s almost spring break…I am so close to getting some good rest) would not allow this.  Instead, I pilfered Gibbs’s Brown Sugar Cupcake recipe.  A chocolate chip cookie’s uniqueness comes from the amount of brown sugar in the batter, so I felt this cupcake base was very appropriate.  I used her recipe exactly, but left out the cinnamon!  Thanks, Gibbsy :)

Next, what to do about the frosting?  To me, the appeal of cookie dough is the deliciousness that comes from just eating it straight from the bowl as batch after batch goes into the over to be baked.  So, I decided to simply use COOKIE DOUGH as the frosting!

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Dark Knight Cupcakes

My brother, via twitter, requested our first symbolic cupcakes.  Being the eternal adolescent that he is, he wanted a cupcake to represent the caped crusader as depicted in the latest Batman flick.  After putting our heads together, we decided we needed a contrast of two cakes: dense bitter chocolate to represent his nightly escapades as the dark knight, and a pure white cake to show his white-bread existence as Bruce Wayne (minus his tendencies to partake in women and wine…that’s just a facade, right?).  I made a bitter chocolate butter cream frosting and then topped it all off with gold flakes!

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Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Lemon & White Chocolate Whipped Cream

Man, the chocolate shavings are pretty.

D Clark won our 100th comment contest, and since D Clark has also made it clear for months that I need to make Lemon Chocolate Cupcakes, a la Trader Joe’s cookies that I have never had, that is what Mels and I will be working with.

Recently, while trawling other baking blogs, I ran across this recipe at Smitten Kitchen (where I also found the inspiration for the Chocolate Peanut Butter Bombs) and knew immediately what I wanted to do.

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Marbled Lemon and Chocolate Cupcakes

D. Clark, I’m really glad you requested this flavor!  It was a lot of fun to work with, and, according to my co-workers, one of my best recipes yet!  The fun was really in finding a good balance between the lemon and chocolate.  How much should there be of each?  How dark should the chocolate be to counteract the tartness of the lemon.  So, the Marbled Lemon and Chocolate Cupcakes are my response to your challenge.  I hope you enjoy the food porn pics :)

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Rocky Road Cupcakes

This cupcake has been on my mind for a long time.  It’s an ice cream flavor that I love and I always though it would make a wonderful cupcake!  I started with the same chocolate cake base that I did for the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes (minus the spices, of course) because I loved the way the texture turned out for those!  Add in some almonds and marshmallows, and you have a fancy-pants Rocky Road Cupcake!

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Cupcake Triple-Treat: Chocolate Ginger, Chocolate Fudge with Peanut Butter, and Fluffy Peanut Butter

Sugar coma yeah yeah

Happy mediums?  They are not my thing.  That explains not only this blog, I suspect, but also my propensity to think that 15+ miles in a hilly city is a reasonable distance to travel by bicycle.  That explains why I passed out on a book at 8:45 last night, because making 3 batches of cupcakes is not, in fact, that exhausting.

These are delicious cupcakes, incidentally.  Delicious.

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