Chocolate Mint Gluten Free Cupcakes

I recently received feedback that I wasn't showing anything gluten free on the blog so I thought I'd try my had at a few vegan gluten free cupcakes. I did a little research on exactly how I could eliminate all the gluten without sacrificing too much vegan goodness. I didn't want to be one of those people who just throws in a bunch of garbanzo bean flour and sugar and calls it good. In fact I refuse to use garbanzo bean flour in any baking, I don't want my cupcakes tasting like hummus. I used the same ingredients that I usually use minus the flour, in substitution I used a combination of Tapioca Flour, White Rice Flour and Quinoa Flour (which is a super protein). I can't take credit for this combo my holy bible of cupcake books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero, always saves me in rough cupcake situations. There are a few other flours out there that I'd like to play around with and see how they mesh in gluten free cupcakes (i.e. coconut flour).

I started with the base laid out in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World tried a bactch of gluten free chocolate lavender that turned out amazing; dense, tasty and it didn't taste like hummus. For my next batch I started to substitue ingredients, playing around with coconut milk instead of soy milk and coconut oil instead of canola and adding a few "missing" ingredients and then throwing in some mint extract to see how well it played with all the other ingredients. The cupcakes turned out really fantastic, all parties agreed.

I'll be playing around with more gluten free recipes in the very near future, and posting some recipes as well.