Hazelnut Cupcakes

Going off the success of the Pistachio cupcakes I made a few weeks back I decided to try out a rich hazelnut cupcake. We had some extra hazelnuts and I had recently purchased some hazelnut oil at the local import store. Learning from past mistakes I toasted the hazelnuts for 10-15 minutes and was able to easily remove the skin from the nuts. I then added the hazelnuts to a food processor and processed until I had a small granules (Hazelnut Meal).

After the cupcakes were finished baking I prepared a rich cocoa butter cream from 100% cocoa powder and topped with a little leftover hazelnut meal. These cupcakes melt in your mouth a nice success that day considering the previous batch of cupcakes I made lacked baking soda and tasted like play dough. Prep before you bake.

Maple Cupcakes

I've only made these once to bring into the office, I omitted the walnut because of a nut allergy and they still turned out terrific. I'd like to try them again with walnuts or pecans.

Pistachio Cupcakes

These cupcakes were inspired by and made for James' 36th birthday. James has been in a pistachio fever since we got back from Paris, where pistachio pastries are everywhere. So it was no surprise that he wanted pistachio cupcakes for his birthday party. The only problem was how to incorporate pistachios into a cupcake. I was a bit late to the planning, but had I been more on top of things I could have purchased pistachio oil online and that would have done the trick more or less. I visited the one Mediterranean store I could find in Seattle with no luck, and I didn't have time to search Pike Place Market so I improvised. I took pistachios and processed into a meal and substituted part of the flour in the recipe with the pistachio meal. This sort of did the trick, however the flavor was still a little lacking. By adding rose water I was able to achieve the desired flavor and off to the oven the cakes went.

Thankfully I wasn't anticipating any issues with the frosting since I had mapped that out already. I was going to use the pistachio paste James and I picked up at Le Bon Marché (La Grande Epicerie).
Thanks to the miracle that is the world wide inter webs you too can own pistachio paste by simply going to Google and searching for it.

The pistachio frosting took a lot longer than I thought due to the fact that the pistachio paste is pretty hard and takes a while to mash down and incorporated into the butter cream frosting. After incorporating the paste I added rose water at James' behest so that the flavor would be more pronounced.

The cupcakes came out perfectly and went over very well at the party. Success!



Address:

Happy Birthday Dan! (Belated...)

I made these cupcakes almost a month ago for a friends birthday. Tres bien!

Cinco de Mayo Margarita Cupcakes (belated)

prinkling of sugar on top.


















We stayed home on Cinco De Mayo, but I made these cupcakes the following Saturday for a belated Cinco de Mayo party. I utilized 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World' as a base and updated the recipe for my liking. Lime plus tequila equals yum. The frosting is the same as the whiskey butter cream substituting the whiskey for tequila with a light sprinkling of blue sugar on top.

Chocolate Cake with Whiskey Buttercream Frosting

James found this great vegan chocolate cake recipe on the internet and I decided to go with it for a friend's birthday cake. I was amazed to see how simple this recipe is, and its delicious! I made two 9in cakes and assembled them with a whiskey buttercream frosting, truly one of the best frosting's EVER! I have to say the cake pretty much KILLED at the potluck. Hurray.

My only critique is that I don't know how to decorate a cake well. I think I'm getting better, but its still a little on the sloppy side. Next time will be better.

Tangerine Zest and Oreo® Cookie Cupcakes

I had an order last weekend for a few Tangerine and Oreo® Cupcakes, they turned out really well. I took the leftovers to a family event. I got good reviews from everyone.

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.

Order

Last week I made two dozen cupcakes for an order, I thought they turned out pretty...

Chai Cardamom Cupcakes with Cashew Buttercream

The poll winning cupcake! And as it turns out one of my all time favorites, but then again a lot of these are my favorites. I knew off the bat that I would extract the chai flavor black tea, I decided to use coconut milk heated up a little on the stove and then steeped four tea bags for 5-6 minutes. Soy milk would work better for this, but I really love to richness that coconut milk brings to a cupcake. After I let the coconut milk cool a little I added a tablespoon of flax seed and allowed the tea mixture to sit for about ten minutes before proceeding with adding the rest of the wet ingredients. While I wait for this process I get the dry goods shifted and ready to add.

Once the cupcakes were finished I ran into a little bit of an internal debate on what to top them with... A spicy chai buttercream, a cardamom buttercream, a powdersugar glaze or somthing else... I settled on cashews. I mixed cashew butter with a vegan buttercream frosting and it turned out awesome. It looked dense but turned out to be light a delicious. I topped them with broken cashews, next time I'll grind them down into finer pieces.

Pineapple Coconut Cupcakes

We had some left over pineapple juice from a curry we made the other day, so I decided to use the excess in a spring cupcake. This is more of a fruit cupcake (ha ha...), the coconut is very subdued. I used coconut milk and a 1/3 cup coconut flour for the coconut flavor. I used a 1/2 a cup of pineapple juice which seems like a lot, but the cupcakes had a great texture to them and were eaten up by James and I. I love using juices in cupcakes, the sugars from the juice seem to crystalize a little on the top of the cake making a thin hard/crunchy layer of cupcake goodness.

For the topping I made a simple pineapple butter cream frosting and attempted to make flowers on the tops of the cakes. Practice makes perfect.

Stout Cupcakes 2.0

I made these on a whim after I tried the first stout cupcakes, and they turned out wonderful. I used coconut milk as the base because cupcakes with coconut milk are KILLER. That's not to imply that the previous posting was a bad cupcake, they were good, the second batch was just better. I left out chocolate because I felt it took away to much from the stout flavor, I replaced it with almond meal because almond meal is one of the best things you can use in baking. I used a 1/4 of stout for the beer flavor which was perfect after the cupcakes were fully baked.

For St. Patrick's Day I added a little festive green coloring.

I used the whiskey butter cream frosting on these cakes as well, terrific! I need to use that frosting for more cupcakes.

Vegan Stout Cupcakes

Set oven to 350

3/4 cup of coconut milk
1 tablespoon flax seed
Whisk flax seed and coconut milk together and let sit for 8-10 minutes. While waiting, in a separate bowl mix the dry goods together.

1 cup plus 2-3 tablesppons pastry flour
1/3 almond meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Set dry goods aside and add remaining wet goods to coconut-flax mixture.

1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 stout
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Mix all wet goods well and slowly add dry goods into wet goods bowl in two or three batches. Once mixed add mixture to baking liners and place the cupcake tray in oven for 20-23 minutes.

Stout Cupcakes 1.0 (Chocolate)

I couldn't help but get sucked into the St. Patrick's Day Holiday especially since I'm unemployed and need to occupy my time with something. I found a cool little shop in North Seattle that sells a lot of cheesy cake decorations (note the shamrock sprinkles). I took this recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and they turned out really well. My only critique was that the chocolate covered up some of the beer flavor. My one addition to these cakes was the whiskey butter cream frosting which is the best icing EVER.

Recipe:
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup shortening
2 -2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup whiskey

Cream margarine and shortening together and then slowly add sugar until consistency looks like large crumbs. Slowly add the whiskey and beat for 5-7 minutes or until frosting is thick and creamy.

Rich Chocolate Cabernet Cupcakes

The combination of chocolate and wine are awesome in wine tastings, so why not cupcake the two? I'm officially making a petition to allow for the verb usage of the word "cupcake" FYI. I don't think I'm the first person to combine chocolate and wine into a cupcake maybe not even the first vegan. I decided on a whim to try these out last week and I'm told they were my best cupcake to date... Maybe I can get a few testimonials in the comments section for those who were lucky enough to nibble on these.

For these cupcakes I didn't want to fall into standard "flavor the icing" mentality and keep the cupcake really simple, which is always a success don't get me wrong, but I waned to make something truly ass-kicking. I opted for a rich chocolate cupcake and added a cheap cabernet sauvignon to the mix, on top of a really killer cupcake I added thin layer of a rich chocolate ganache over the tops and finished the cupcake with a vegan butter cream frosting with cabernet sauvignon added instead of soy milk.

I'm taking away one lesson from these cupcakes 'WATCH THE BAKING POWDER'! Thankfully my mistake didn't ruin the flavor or the cupcake itself. You might be able to tell from the photos that the cupcakes are a little sunken. I didn't take into the account that I'd have to up the baking powder with the addition of the cabernet. The mistake made the addition of the chocolate ganache a lot easier, I was originally planning on breaking a hole in the center and filling it with the ganache. All's well that ends well.

Coconut Creme Cupcakes

I've wanted to do a recipe with tons of coconut for a while but I was never sure how I was going to go about it. I read a dozen different coconut cake recipes most of which just included coconut shreds in the recipe which isn't enough for me. I found a decent recipe and modified it to include coconut milk, oil, shreds, and flour. The only coconut item I didn't include was coconut extract which i though was unnecessary since I had so much of the real thing already in the recipe. The recipe I used (Top Secret) made a really dense and thick batter and I was slightly worried and then I tasted one. These were so good I made another batch the next day to take with us to a vegan outing.

For the frosting I used a standard butter cream recipe but substituted coconut milk for soy milk.

1/4 cup margerine
1/4 cup shortening
(Mixed really well with a fork)
2 cups powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract










After I frosted the cake I then toasted a small amount of coconut in a sauce pan until browned. When the toasted coconut cooled I sprinkled it around the edges of the cupcake.

The cupcakes were moist and dense and the added creamy coconut butter cream frosting made a huge impression on all my friends I shared these with.

Très bon