Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

I recently purchased my own copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, so when the staff holiday party came around with its potluck element, I decided to pull out the mini-muffin pans and make something from my new cookbook for the occasion.

With my sister's help I decided on the Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting. The challenge ended up being the great ingredient hunt.

By a strange twist of fate (shopping at a Farmer's Market and looking up what I'd bought in my friend's copy of The Flavor Bible for compatible spices) I ended up purchasing ground ginger from our kitchen specialty store a few months ago. It has sat, unused, in my pantry since. That was the easiest of the new ingredients to find. Light molasses I found quickly in the baking aisle of my local supermarket. Two down.

With some assistance gained at the customer service counter of my local Publix, I finally located crystallized ginger, in the "ethnic food" aisle, with the Asian cuisine. The same gentleman also helped me discover that while the mart did carry soy yogurt, it only had strawberry flavored. Also, the store was out of mini-muffin pan liners - I'd have to rely on what I had left at home.

On my way to the checkout I called home and ask them to call the Fresh Market which is literally across the street from the Publix, to see if they carried soy yogurt. No, they did not.

I went home and called different Publix locations around town - from past experience I know that they sometimes stock different items - indeed, one location carried the same brand of soy yogurt as my local store, not only in strawberry, but also in... peach. I don't want to even try to imagine what either of those would do for the flavor of gingerbread cupcakes.

My final call was to Mother Earth market, and I was thrilled that my quest was coming to an end. They carried both plain and vanilla soy yogurt - in many different brands.

Finally home with all the ingredients, my sister helped measure things out as I chopped up the crystallized ginger, and zested and juiced the lemons. I ended up with 25 small muffin pan liners for my 24 muffin pan spaces, but too much batter - so the extra went into 5 large cupcakes.

We baked the miniatures first - they required only about 10 minutes, while the full sized ones took 20 minutes.

Mini-cupcakes cooling

I made the buttercream frosting while they baked. One oddity - the recipe calls for lemon zest, but the instructions don't mention when to add it, so I added it with a few stirs at the end.

My Lemon Buttercream Frosting was very lemony, but didn't preform so well on the "cream" side. The answer is obvious - I dreaded cleaning the beaters from my electric mixer so much that I beat the frosting by hand. This obviously affected the amount of "fluff" my frosting achieved.

Lemon buttercream frosting - not fluffy, but still delicious.

After the cupcakes cooled sufficiently, I iced them, and found my frosting didn't spread as well as I would like - lesson learned about skimping on steps.

I took one of the mini-cupcakes for my taste test. What I learned is that I don't like ginger, or molasses, or perhaps the combination of the two. At the end of the day, this is  not the recipe for me.

Regardless, I made a second batch the next day for my immediate co-workers (with 200+ people at the large staff party, none of them had a chance to try my cupcakes.) It wasn't until I had the oven pre-heated, and most of the ingredients mixed that I realized I was short 1/4 a cup of the required 1/2 cup of maple syrup. I checked my pantry and did a quick substitution, mixing half pancake syrup and half agave nectar to make up the missing volume.  Admittedly, I did not sample this second batch, as they were all full-sized cupcakes, but my co-workers gave the confection a thumbs-up.

Larger cupcakes with frosting.

Overall, I learned a lot making these cupcakes, and I'm glad I tried them, but I really don't see making them again.

New tools/ ingredients:  light molasses, crystallized ginger, ground ginger, soy yogurt
Recipes used: Gingerbread Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World pg 53 ; Lemon Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World pg 96
Co-baker: sister
Date: Dec. 6-7, 2010

Holiday Fruit Bars - Dec. 2010

Growing up my mom made her holiday fruit bars every year - batches for our teachers, for the exterminator, for parties, and of course a stash to have around the house. For me, I knew Christmas was coming when the fruit bars were being made. A few years ago we hosted Christmas at my house, and I made the fruit bars - my husband's mother and grandfather both clamored for a copy of the recipe before they left.

Since then I have not gone back to the recipe, but this year I decided that with all my experiments in vegan baking I was learning a lot, but not really experimenting. So I pulled out the recipe, and looked at what substitutions I would have to make to veganize it - my first attempt at veganizing a recipe on my own. Exciting new territory.

Looking at the recipe for the first time in a few years, I was pleased to see that I would only have to make two substitutions from the original. Vegan margarine in place of the butter, and then something to replace the two eggs. Thinking back to what I've baked over the year, what I had on hand, and what I thought would fit the original recipe, I decided to try two variations, one with Ener-G Egg Replacer, and the other with flax-seeds to replace the egg.

For the trial I used two identical, recyclable 8" square aluminum pans, using Pam cooking spray to grease them. I chopped all the cherries and dates for both batches (luckily I had bought pre-chopped walnuts), then made my two egg replacers, mixing each with warm water. I then measured out the other ingredients into two bowls, and added the egg replacers, and mixed the batter, adding the yummy chopped bits from earlier last, per the recipe.

2 sets of ingredients, ready for mixing

Flax-seed batter on the left, Ener-G egg replacer on the right

I poured the batter immediately into the two pans, and put the pans side by side in the preheated oven, each pan on a cookie sheet to provide extra support. The recipe said to let the fruit bars cook for 45 minutes at 350. I set the timer for 35 minutes and cleaned up. Neither batch looked "done" at 35 minutes, so I came back at 40. The flax-seed batter had firmed up, but the batch that had the egg-replacer was still bubbly, so I left it in for the other 5 minutes.

Finished Flax-Seed batter

Finished Ener-G Egg Replacer batter

I let both batches cool, and then cut them into smaller piece than was ever allowed in my house, rolling each in sugar. A few cherries and nuts were lost in the process, but both sets of bars seemed to hold together pretty well. All that was left was the taste test.

Sugar added- Flax seed left; Ener-G right

Luckily I have eager friends and co-workers. Members from my writing group preferred the flax-seed to egg-replacer 2-1. One girl who liked the flax-seed one better said she liked them because they were more moist, and complained that the one made with egg-replacer tasted like "flour and brown sugar".

At work, 2 could discern no difference, and 2 loved the flax seed option. One last opinion from family weighed in on the side of the egg-replacer version, though she admitted to wanting the flax-seed one to be better (she was the only one who went into the tasting "blind", not knowing which sample was which), and was surprised when she picked the egg-replacer one.

I also liked the flax-seed variation better, also because it was more moist – but I know that part of this could be the extra 5 minutes that the egg-replacer batter stayed in the oven.

Yummy - Flax seed mix

Also yummy, but fewer votes, Ener-G

Overall, the votes went 5-2-2 – Flax, Egg-replacer, no-difference.

I made the recipe again, a few days later, to give to another set of co-workers. I had exhausted my supply of recyclable pans, so I used my regular square pan, a 9" glass one. I use margerine to grease the dish. That night I saw firsthand the difference that different pan materials can cause.

These flax-seed variety fruit bars had a lot less sticking power. When they were cool and sliced, I began to remove the first bar to roll in sugar, it almost fell apart in my hand, and overall this batch lost a lot more of the confetti of goodies that make these treats what the are. I took to pressing each bar together before gently rolling them in sugar (well, more gently than the previous two batches). The held together okay, but rather than being moist, the bars seemed to skirt the edge of gooey.

This was definitely a learning experience, and I look forward to trying these again in a few days, make a veganized batch of these holiday classics for my mom, to see what she thinks.


Vegan Holiday Fruit Bars
2 TBSP ground flax seeds
6 TBSP warm water
1 cup sugar
2/3 cups all purpose white flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup candied cherries, halved
1 cup chopped, pitted dates
1 cup chopped nuts
granulated sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.

2. Grease 9" square metal pan.

3. In a small bowl mix flax seeds and water until well blended. Set aside.

4. In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, baking powder and salt.

5. Fold in margarine, vanilla and the flax-seed mixture. Blend well.

6. Add nuts, cherries and dates, mix until covered by batter.

7. Pour into a well-greased 9" square pan and bake at 350 degrees for 42-45 minutes.

8. Remove from oven, and place on a wire rack and let cool completely.

9.Once cool, cut into 16 squares. Roll each square in granulated sugar.

New tools/ ingredients:  Candied Cherries, Dates,
Recipe used: My own variation of my mom's Holiday Fruit Bar recipe
Co-baker: solo-mission
Date: Dec. 6-15, 2010