AusNZVeganMoFo: Vegan cupcakes take over the baby shower

My cousin had her baby shower today, and by some miracle I was not on call this weekend. Hurrah! I offered to do some vegan baking to bring along. There are few things as handy, cute and impressive to take along to a party than cupcakes. So I opened up my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World when I got home from work on Saturday afternoon and set to work in the kitchen!



These are Chocolate Orange Cupcakes, a variation on the Basic Chocolate Cupcake. These are so amazingly AWESOME! In the batter I used the option of adding one and a half teaspoons of orange essence and I also substituted 1/8 cup of sugar with Cointreau. The batter is so great you could practically drink it! It is topped with Orange Buttercream and decorated with chopped orange zest and a chocolate chip. I think they looked adorable. They are fantastic, the cupcake itself is so light and moist and the whole ensemble is just delicious.



Chai Latte Cupcakes were the second cupcake on the menu. I had made these once before, but this time I decided to try and stencil a design on it. The topping mixture (icing sugar, cocoa and cinnamon) make far more than you need, so I had some saved from my first time of making it (and some saved for more batches later). First I dusted on a layer or two of plain icing sugar, then the stencil. The heart stencil looks cute, but next time I would make the heart larger andmore defined - some of them look like triangles! Sadly, by the time the cupcakes were transported and hung around waiting for the sweets to be served the the sugar had kind of melted into the cupcakes like a glaze. You could still see the heart, but not as cute as when I first did them. If you can, try and wait until the last minute before serving before putting on the stencil!


Here they are all ready to be served on my cute little tiered server. They were well received, and people could not believe they were made with no animal ingredients! It is always good to show some people exactly what vegan cooking is all about!


For some extra fun, I made Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles from Isa and Terry's upcoming book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. They are delicious, with a fantastic chilli kick! Very delicious.

Cute Cat Photo of the Post


Meet Nora, also known as 'bug' because of her curious little bug-eyed appearance! You can't see it quite as clearly with the angle she has her face (typical kitty, looked everywhere but the camera!), but it is quite an adorable little appearance. Nora is one of a litter of six kittens we have at the clinic, we shall soon be looking for homes for them!