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.

Chocolate Espresso Gluten Free Cupcakes

I made these for a friend the other day, I used the basic gluten free cupcake formula but again added coconut milk, espresso and some coffee extract. For the vegan butter cream frosting I added a little coffee extract to ensure a decent amount of coffee flavor with every bite.

I think I can now claim success with gluten free and will eventually be making different kinds of gluten free cupcakes for friends. My recipe follows;

Set oven to 350

Wet Goods
1/2 cup of soy milk
1/2 cup of coconut milk
1/3 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup vegan sugar
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

mix the soy, coconut milk and flax seed together and let sit for a few minutes. Mix in the rest of the wet goods. Slowly add;

1/4 cup tapioca flour

Mix really well 5-7 minutes until smooth, slowly add the dry goods;

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup coconut or quinoa flour (I love the taste of coconut flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Continue mixing until all ingredients are well combined and fill cupcake liners 3/4(ish) full and bake for 20-24 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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.