April 9, 2009 - Vegan Cupcakes and Frosting

Once a year Library West on campus hosts an Edible Book Contest "where the only rule is it must be edible and must be somehow related to a book!" The entries are put on display in front of the library, and the general public is invited to help judge. In the past, once the judging was over, everyone present was invited to partake of the entries. When word got to us about this year's contest, Lila, Alison and I decided to enter with an entry inspired by "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" - the idea was not only to get our name out there, but to also provide an entry that anyone of the general public judges could eat.

Our concept was to use the recipes in the book to make mini-cup cakes, and to make a hemisphere cake (to represent the world), which the mini-cupcakes could then overrun. Because it was our first time trying either mini-cupcakes, or the hemisphere cake, we decided to do a test run on cupcakes this week. Since the contest was on Thursday, we'd have to get together earlier in the week (Monday was the only day that worked for all of us) to make the entry, so we'd be making the trial and then the real thing a mere 4-days later.

I was a little disappointed to see that "Best Non-Fiction" had been removed from the categories, but the big disappointment came when, once we submitted our entry form, I was sent a thank you along with more detailed instructions for the contest. Including how, unlike past years, the entries were to be picked up by the participants, and not fed to the general public. This, combined with the fact that our cakes would be past their prime, discouraged us from entering this year. We didn't need to feed our friends the same cupcakes two weeks in a row.

So, with the Edible Book Contest off our agenda for this year, we still decided to try recipes from the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which we borrowed from our friend Rusty. There were many delicious looking recipes to choose from, but we finally decided on the coconut lime cupcakes. I accompanied Alison to the grocery store the day before to pick up ingredients, and we were frustrated in our search for coconut oil and non-hydrogenated shortening. A decision on the fly, we decided to make the chocolate-marble cupcakes instead, with orange butter cream frosting.

Still eager to try the mini-cupcakes, I borrowed the mini-muffin pan from my sister, and bought the itty-bitty pan liners we would need.

On Thursday we got set up at Alison's place, mixed the ingredients for the cake (taking turns adding things and reading the recipe), and then split the batter into the directed portions. The smaller batch became chocolate, and would be used to marbleize the regular cupcakes. The directions call for adding both the vanilla and the chocolate batter at the same time, side by side, then using a tooth-pick to swirl together. With both Lila and Alison adding the batter, I think we had it easy- the hardest part was not getting the batter to drip on the pans. We noticed the chocolate portion of the batter was more liquid, so Alison (manning the chocolate side of things) had a bit of an easier time of things. Once the mini-cupcake pans were filled, we used the remainder of the batter in 5 "regular" sized cupcakes. While the recipe says that there should be more vanilla batter in the end, we found the opposite was somehow true for us - a full sized cupcake's worth of chocolate batter, with a small vanilla heart on top.

It was my job to mix/marbleize the cupcakes, though we did choose to leave some half and half, since the division between the vanilla and chocolate was so perfect. In the end, once the baking was done and we were tasting our product, I realized I didn't mix them nearly as well as I thought I did / as I should have. For the future, more swirls are preferred.




While the cupcakes were baking (the mini-cupcakes were done in less than half the time listed for the full sized cupcakes -but since we bake with the oven light on, we were able to make the judgment call as to when to pull them out of the oven), we set to making the frosting. We decided to make two different butter cream frosting, and since the base was the same, we just added the whole amount of shortening and margarine to mix together, then split in half as best as we could. We then added the half-amount required of the other ingredients. As Lila mixed the base, Alison took the orange butter cream frosting (juicing an orange, and using orange zest instead of the lemon zest) and I mixed the ingredients for the chocolate butter cream frosting, accidentally adding too much vanilla.

When it came time to taste test, we discovered that the smaller cup-cakes, at least, were sweet enough without frosting. I think everyone liked the orange frosting just a bit better than the chocolate (even those whom we shared the cupcakes with later). In the future we'll try the lemon zest in the orange butter cream frosting (as the recipe called for) since we noticed the frosting got a little bitter after the first day.

So while we didn't end up making these cupcakes a second time, as entry for the Edible Book Contest, we very much enjoyed them, and I consider this evening's baking a success.