Pumpkin Cranberry Cupcakes

Even with the holiday season newly over, we were still receiving guests from time to time. This time, one of my indirect cousins came over to our house for an afternoon. For lunch, I made a pot of veggie spaghetti sauce, and my aunt helped me cook the spaghetti while I went and handled dessert. While we're on the topic of leftovers, I still had some ingredients left from the pumpkin cake roll. I still had about 3/4 of a cup of pumpkin puree left, along with half a jar of applesauce, and half a tub of cream cheese.

To make it manageable, I decided to make cupcakes. Due to shortage of time, I couldn't do very extended research, so settled for one of the first things I could find: a pumpkin muffin recipe from Vegan Richa.

As I did not have a full cup of pumpkin puree, I filled in the remaining volume with applesauce. In lieu of chocolate chips, I went for a handful of chopped dried cranberries. I did not want to deal with filling the inside with a cream cheese mix, so these were topped with cream cheese frosting. I wanted to play around a little with decorations, so went with a flower. The center is a trimmed dried cranberry. I used dairy milk this time because that was all I had. I also do not stock molasses, so I used some reduced sugar syrup I had.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cup flour
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup pureed pumpkin
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 tbs molasses
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 handful dried cranberries

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 200˚C.
2. In a bowl, mix all dry ingredients.
3. Add in wet ingredients. Add in a tbs or 2 of milk as necessary.
4. Fill cupcake pans 3/4 full.
5. Bake for 15 min, then lower heat to 180˚C for another 5 mins.
6. Cool, frost, and enjoy.

Orange Zest Cupcakes

For a quick brunch between friends, I decided to make some cupcakes (mostly because I've been wanting to bake something, but didn't have the opportunity to). I still had some candied orange peels from the last candied orange cupcakes, so I opted for an orange-y cupcake. Good thing I still have some oranges sitting in the fruits basket!

I baked a half batch of basic vegan cake (this time, it yielded 6 cupcakes), in which I added about 2 tbs of candied orange zests, and grated in the zest of an additional orange.

I made a batch of frosting with some orange blossom aroma, and then decorated with an orange supreme and some more candied peels.

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BASIC VEGAN CAKE RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup unsweetened soymilk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2 tbs vanilla extract
• 1 tbs white or apple cider vinegar

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C. Grease and flour a cake pan. Alternatively, use cupcake liners.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
3. In another bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones.
5. Mix well, ensuring there are no dry pockets of flour.
6. Pour into pan.
7. Bake for 30 mins (for a whole cake) or 20 mins (for normal-sized cupcakes), or until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Let it cool and ice/top it however you want.

FROSTING RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 5 tbs flour
• 1 cup soymilk
• 1 cup butter, softened
• granulated sugar, to taste
• 1-2 tsp of flavor

  Procedure

1. In a saucepan, whisk together flour and soymilk. Heat until thickened to a batter-like consistency.
2. Add in the flavor.
3. Cool to room temperature. 
4. Beat together butter and sugar until fluffy, and no graininess from the sugar remains
5. Add the flour/soymilk mix, and beat until it reaches a frosting consistency.

Candied Orange Cupcakes

I had some whipped cream left from Apple Cinnamon Cake, so I wanted to quickly make some cupcakes to top it with. Unfortunately, the whipped cream had gone bad already...

Instead, I decided to candy some orange peels, and add them to the batter. I also used the leftover ones as topping.

The recipe used is the basic vegan cake recipe I always use, except I ran out of soy milk, so I used cow's milk (Recipe in the linked cake above). Half a batch made 7 cupcakes. I added the candied peels of about 1 orange.

Pink Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my cousins' kid's birthday party. I knew there would be cake (and indeed, there was a LOT), but I wasn't sure there would be egg-free cake for my dad and aunt, who don't eat eggs. So just to be safe, I quickly whipped up some cupcakes using my trusty go-to cake recipe (same as this one, minus lemon juice and zest, and plus vanilla sugar).

For topping, I simply beat whipping cream mixed with sugar, then added a few teaspoons of the leftover berry sauce/jam from the cheesecakes I'd made earlier that week. This turned it into a pink whipped cream. Due to me forgetting my piping syringe, and not thinking of asking my cousin to use his piping bag and tip, I just frosted them with a spoon.

Sinterklaas Cupcakes

For some weird reason, we had a super early Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) themed Hallway dinner yesterday. Sinterklaas is usually celebrated on December 5th... Being truly out of ideas, I decided to go with cupcakes, and let the theme be made out of decorations.

The cupcakes are plain, vegan cupcakes in which I added a dash of cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg. I made some spéculoos (speculaas in Dutch) flavored  frosting by making a batch of frosting and mixing in a couple of large scoops of spreadable spéculoos (also known as cookie butter in certain places). I also crushed a spéculoos cookie and sprinkled that on top of the frosting.

The decorations are piped white chocolate (that started melting and not holding shape as I was putting them on the cupcakes. They represent the hat and staff that Sinterklaas usually sports.

Lemon cupcakes

I wanted to give something to some family friends for bringing me to a rally yesterday. I also wanted to treat my cousins who are in Belgium for a weekend. This lead to me baking up a batch of cupcakes~

I made them in 2 half batches (with my little cousin's help), due to restricted baking space in the oven. I made my basic vegan cake recipe, adding about 1.5 tsp of lemon zest to the dry ingredients, and subbing 2 tbs of lemon juice for the vinegar per half recipe.

My brother had giving me a pastry filling syringe last Christmas, and I wanted to try if it would work with this recipe. So I made some vegan lemon curd (recipe below). Verdict: it only worked for the taller cupcakes, and was not much of a filling, more like a moistening, as this recipe does not create a hole in the middle like choux dough would.

I mixed some leftover lemon juice and zest into my frosting recipe. Due to my decorative piping syringe tip going missing, I had to borrow my cousin's, which I was not accustomed to. This led to uglier than expected frosting arrays, and I ended up going with my original idea of piping chocolate hearts on top, using my decorating pen.

I made a total of 24 cupcakes, 12 of which were in paper cups, for easy delivery. Some went to family friends, some to cousins next door, and the others for my visiting relatives and my parents.

The only non-vegan aspects are the frosting and chocolate (dark).

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

     Cupcakes

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 3 tsp lemon zest
• 1 cup unsweetened plain soymilk
• 1/2 cup neutral oil
• 2 tbs lemon juice

     Lemon Curd

• 1/4 cup cold water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbs cornstarch
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (~1 lemon)
• 2 tsp grated lemon zest
• pinch of salt

     Frosting

• 2 1/2 tbs flour
• 1/2 cup milk (I used soymilk)
• vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 3 tbs sugar
• some lemon juice and zest

  Procedure

     Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. Line tin(s).
3. In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients
5. Pour the wet into the dry and wisk until just combined. Do not over mix.
6. Pour into tin(s) and bake ~15 mins for cupckaes, or 25 mins for a cake, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

     Lemon Curd

1. In a saucepan, whisk together water, sugar, cornstarch, and salt until the cornstarch is dissolved.
2. Bring mixture to boil, then simmer until thickened stirring constantly.
3. Add in lemon juice and zest.
4. Let mix cool and thicken.

     Frosting

1. In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk. Place on stovetop and heat until thickened. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Add in some vanilla.
3. In a mixing bowl, whip butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the completely cooled  milk-flour mix and beat until it reaches the consistency of whipped cream.
5. Whip in lemon juice and zest. 
6. Spread or pipe onto cupcakes of choice.

Chocolate mousse and cupcakes

September 13, 2013
My mom had some friends visiting for a snack and tea get-together, so I made some desserts to go with the tea. Composed of failed egg-free chocolate mousse (I beat the cream too long) that turned almost into truffle filling. Topped with some whipped cream. Accompanied by some mini cupcakes made with my go-to cake recipe, just without the matcha.

Birthday Cupcakes and Truffles

June 9, 2013

June 8th was the birthday of someone who is very important to me. I wanted to give her something special, but had no chance to make anything intricate. So I settled for cupcakes. The recipe for the cake is this basic vegan cake recipe (it's almost my go-to recipe for cakes nowadays), except without the matcha. I made some large cupcakes as well as some mini ones.

The frosting is the same as well, except that I tried to give it a slight strawberry flavor by mixing in some strawberry jam. The difference in moisture content (as well as a lack of time resulting in insufficient cooling of the mixture) led to it having a weird, almost unmixed aspect >.<

Some of the mini cupcakes fell apart when I tried to take them out of the silicone mold, so I thought I would try to make some impromptu cake truffles that I've read about on so many blogs. I put the broken cupcakes in a blender to turn it into cake crumbs, and mixed in leftover frosting to make it stick together. I formed little balls, stuck toothpicks in them, then dipped them in melted chocolate.

I had a few issues with the cake balls not staying on the toothpick while dipping in the chocolate. After looking it up, it would seem that it's best to refrigerate the uncoated truffles before dipping them. It will be worth trying another time (with maybe less sugar in the cake/frosting mix).

For the end result, I packed a couple of large cupcakes with a few of the mini ones, and a bunch of truffles, into an aluminum pan (kind of like those that pre-cooked lasagna comes in at the store, because that's all I had), decorated it all, and gave it as a present, with a card.

Vegan Matcha Cupcakes and Cake

I had this urge to bake something, yesterday... So I went online and looked for a good vegan cake recipe, seeing how my last few batches of cupcakes were too dense. I came across a Very Vanilla Vegan Cupcakes recipe from Whipped Baking, and I knew I just had to try it.

Due to the necessity for speed when dealing with recipes using the chemical reaction between vinegar and baking soda, I couldn't just stand there and wait for my first batch of cupcakes to be done before finishing the batter, so I poured it all into a small cake tin.

Recipe~
Ingredients:
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup unsweetened plain soymilk
- 1/2 cup neutral oil
- 2 tbs vanilla extract (I didn't have extract, so I used a vanilla syrup... 2 tbs is fine, and not too strong)
- 1 tbs white or apple cider vinegar (I used white so that it didn't interfere with the matcha)
- matcha powder

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven 180°C
2. Line tin(s)
3. In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients.
5. Pour the wet into the dry and whisk until just combined. Do not over mix.
6. Pour into tin(s) and bake around 15 mins for cupcakes, or 25 mins for a cake, or until a toothpick comes out dry.

I used around 30g matcha powder, but the flavor was very subtle... So I'll have to test some more to find the right proportions.

The only non-vegan aspect is in the frosting.

Frosting recipe~
Ingredients:
- 5 tbs flour
- 1 cup milk (I used soymilk)
- vanilla extract
- 1 cup softened butter
- sugar

Procedure:
1. In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk. Place on stovetop and heat until thickened. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Add in some vanilla.
3. In a bowl, whip butter with sugar until light and fluffy.
Note: I tend to estimate the amount of sugar differently each time, to ensure it's not too sweet. This time, I made a quarter of a batch of frosting, with about 2 tsp of sugar.
4. Add the completely cooled milk-flour mix and beat until it reaches the consistency of whipped cream.
5. Spread or pipe on cupcakes of choice.

Apple Cupcakes

Apple cupcakes. I made them because I wanted to give fruity cupcakes to this elderly lady, but didn't want to make them too sweet. Hense the tweaking of the original recipes.

I got the recipe off a All About Cupcakes, though I had to tweak the recipe a bit. I don't recommend following my recipe, because the cake itself wasn't as fluffy as it should've been.

Anyways, I followed the website's recipe, except I put about 1/2-3/4 cup of milk instead, and only 1/4 cup sugar.


Frosting. This time was not a buttercream frosting. I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen.

I did a half batch (and still had a bit too much for my 12 cupcakes), and again, I only incorperated a little sugar at the time. I was delicious.

With the leftover frosting and the 2/3 of the apple I had left after decorating, I stewed the apples, topped them with the lightly sweet frosting, and ate it as a creamy apple dessert. That was super delicious!

Cupcake

A pretty failed cupcake I made. We ate most of them before I could get a picture in. I think they look ok, but they were too... dense, not fluffy enough.

Buttercream icing's homemade, but too sweet (even though I put half of what the recipe told me...

Slightly raspberry flavored (I put the milk from the recipe with some leftover raspberry jam and pulsed a couple times in a food processor before adding).

Cousin's Birthday

For my cousin's birthday:
1) fluffy white cupcakes (my first time ever) with whipped cream on top.

2) a failed cake... (It's supposed to be a fondant au chocolat but it failed....)