Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
3 cups unbleached white flour
1-1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup Sucanat
1/4 cup date sugar
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
7 tablespoon cocoa powder
1-1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
2 tablespoon vinegar
10 tablespoon liquified shortening
2 cups cold water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, mixing well to break up the cocoa powder evenly. (Note: the three vegan sugars listed are interchangeable in any amount as long as the total vegan sugar for the recipe equals two cups.)
Pour maple syrup, vinegar, and melted shortening over the dry ingredients. Add cold water immediately and stir vigorously until all lumps are gone.
Oil and lightly flour muffin tins or add paper cups to the trays. Fill with chocolate cake batter to roughly three-fourths full (batter will rise). Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick stuck through the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Let cool completely and frost with your favorite vegan frosting. (I try to make my own frostings, but a delicious ready-made compliment to this super moist cupcake is Duncan Hines Mocha!)
Enjoy!!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
WOW! WOW! WOW! :D
I'll start by saying that I altered this recipe based on what I had quite a bit and that's always risky for me since I'm not a truly experienced vegan baker. BUT holy crap these came out PERFECT!
I will also say that while both my husband and I found them awesome, they were a bit more like a muffin to me than a cupcake- could be the flour/oil combo I used. I was reminded of these huge non-vegan individually packaged chocolate muffins (they also came in blueberry) I used to indulge in years and years ago.
These cupcakes were moist, rose into perfect domes ready for what ever you want to top them with (we ate them as is), they didn't stick (*note below) and were balanced in all flavor categories.
My Modifications:
* substituted 1/3 (1 cup) of the white flour for pastry flour
* 1 1/2 cups organic natural sugar & 1/2 teaspoon stevia (you can just taste the stevia, it's not overbearing at all)
* 2 squares of grated Dagoba cacao baking chocolate bar (melted together with following ingredient)
* 4 heaping tablespoons of vegan margarine, melted with the chocolate double boiler style
* substituted agave nectar for maple syrup
* used apple cider vinegar (I had no problems at all with the smell or flavor- it was undetectable)
* added 1/4 cup vegan chocolate chips (any chips that fell to the bottom of the batter while baking did stick to the pan a bit but not bad at all and were easy to take out and put back into the cupcake)
I also had only one cupcake pan (which I did oil and flour) so I baked each pan full for 20 minutes & they were perfect. When the batter was first mixed it was a bit thin, but after a few minutes it set up to a pudding like texture and was SOOOO good we seriously considered just eating that! :>
I made these last night for my friend's birthday. My meat-eating roommate (who often pokes fun at my veganism...in a friendly way of course!) thought they tasted quite good. I agree!
I used plain ole white vinegar. It smelled strong at first but was perfectly fine once I stirred everything up and baked them.
And yes, licking the bowl was great fun!
What kind of vinegar?
I haven't made these, but you can never go wrong in baking with apple cider vinegar.
Yummy!
I made these in a 9"X9" pan, instead of a muffin tin, greased with a bit of canola oil- luckily, I halved the recipe, or I would have had enough to fill the pan twice.
The needed more sugar though- I left out the date sugar, because I didn't have any but they definatly could have used the extra sweetener.
A little bit of rice milk and some confectioners' sugar drizzeled over them, plus a few minutes in the 'fridge took care of that.
I'll make these again.
I followed the recipe to the T, but I "accidentally" put in 2 tablespoons of maple syrup instead of 1 1/2, and I added a dash of vanilla. These cupcakes are WONDERFUL! I strongly recomend them. Next time I think I want to make it into a cake. >: ) The batter has to be one of the most delicious things that you can lick from a bowl.
See my photo here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66919832@N00/129566363/
These were good, nice cake texture, light chocolate flavor, and not too sweet. Easy to pack and store, and keep well. Ity was hard not to eat all the batter. Could be a little more moist, I'm going to try adding more maple syrup and some vanilla next time.