Superb Vanilla Cupcakes

I've been working on creating a great vanilla cupcake for some time now. I've nailed chocolate but have had a lot of trouble getting a vanilla cupcake that wasn't sub-par. Finally (with help) I made a batch of perfect vanilla cupcakes. I do say that this is by far my favorite cupcake for summer. Its versatile and easy to make. For this first batch I made a delicious blueberry cream cheese frosting that was thick and creamy, contrasting the light airy cupcake. I also topped the cupcake with a few blueberry's as a garnish.

The cupcake is really simple and frankly pretty amazing.

Oven at 375

- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/3 cup almond meal
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1 cup cold water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract

Mix all ingredients well

add;

- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Mix again and bake for 22 minutes!

I usually rave about most of the cupcakes I make because cupcakes are a kind of crack for me, but these cakes are truly fantastic, especially with the blueberry.

Vanilla Blueberry Gluten Free Cupcakes

I got a special request from a friend to make gluten free cupcakes for an party, we decided on doing a vanilla cupcake with blueberry frosting. Thankfully the frosting was already gluten free. For this cake I used the standard gluten free recipe that you can find in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, this book has a lot of good base recipes that you can build off of. For the frosting I used a standard buttercream recipe;

1/2 cup margerine
1/2 cup shortening
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 of freshly blended blueberries

You can substitute 1/4 of blueberries for soy milk, juice, booze or whatever to get your frosting to compliment your cake flavor.

I really liked this combination, the blueberries were delicious and the cake was even better.