I Eat Cupcakes

These triple-chocolate, pudding-filled, fudge-frosted Brooklyn Blackout cupcakes are a vegan version of the Ebinger’s Brooklyn Blackout Cake from the 1950s.

Vegan rocky road cupcakes! Recipe here: http://vegandollhouse.com/recipes/rocky-road-cupcakes

For Vanessa's birthday, I knew I had to make something not only vegan and gluten-free so she could actually eat it, but also cute, because she's about the most adorable person I know. I decided on Snickers Cupcakes.

Pokemon seems to be a phase that everyone goes through at some point in their life (except for me because I think it may have been born when I was into punk rock music and thought I was too tough to like cute little kid stuff). Zen and Isabelle went through a pokemon stage a few years ago, and like most stages it faded away, and the Phamphey and Piplup jackets I made them went unworn. Then all of a sudden, after I had basically forgotten what the word pokemon meant, they came back to life--like little cute supernatural zombie creatures! Now all I hear about is charmander and houdour and celebi. So, it wasn't a huge surprise when I asked what kind of cupcakes Isabelle and Ashleigh wanted for their 12th birthday dance party, and they said the theme was pokemon. 

Since they didn't mind what flavor the cupcakes were, I made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla-almond icing.

Isabelle had this black decorating icing leftover from her super cute Halloween Jack Skellington cupcakes that happens to be vegan by default (but not good for you, so use it sparingly).

The first step of making pokeballs is to make a premier ball. If you have any pokemon fans in your life, you may have been told what a premier ball is. If your attention span all of a sudden reduces from 1 hour to 2.3 seconds when someone starts talking about pokemon like mine does, then you probably don't remember what the difference between a regular pokeball and a premier ball is. I left one of the pokeballs as a premier ball because one of Isabelle and Ashleigh's friends doesn't eat red food coloring, so she got a special premier ball at the party.

You can buy red sugar from the store. I didn't. I like my organic raw, unbleached sugar, so I made my own red sugar. You can see how I made it here. I applied the red sugar to the pokeballs by spooning on spoonfuls while tilting the cupcakes over the bowl. 

Here are the birthday girls with their cupcakes.

It’s Josipa’s birthday! Last year she requested the same cupcakes that I had made the month before for Jessica’s birthday, which were apparently a big hit, however, Josipa deserves a new recipe for her birthday because she’s the Cutest Croatian Cupie (C3) doll in the world!

I was trying to decide what type of cupcake to make when I remembered a time forever ago (forever = approximately 6 years) that Josipa and I tried to make tiramisu. I say tried not because we didn’t succeed in creating the dessert, but more because it was quite possibly the worst tiramisu in the history of tiramisu. Josipa is an excellent cook, and I’m not the worst cook in the world, but somehow the Robinsipa combination failed. I’m pretty confident that our failure was attributed to us both adding the required amount of baking soda, therefore causing the entire dessert to taste like a baking soda cake. Also, we doubled the recipe, so we were stuck with a ridiculous amount of this undesirable treat. So, I did what everyone does when they’re stuck with too much of a bad thing. I brought it to work to pawn it off on my coworkers. If time travel is ever possible, I might use it to reverse that decision due to the relentless way my coworkers have teased me to this day. Basically, my takeaway from this (and I hope it’s also a lesson learned vicariously through me for others reading this) is that if you’re trying to sell people on veganism, don’t introduce them to vegan food by feeding them something gross.

I had been forming an idea in my mind for a few days of how I wanted to make these cupcakes so I headed to Whole Foods (and I coincidentally ran into the birthday girl in the banana aisle) for ingredients, where I was inspired by looking at their bakery case and seeing a tiramisu that was served in a cup made out of chocolate. It totally reminded me of the scene in Willy Wonka where he sips the tea out of the daffodil and then bites the cup. The only decision I hadn’t yet finalized is what type of cup to serve it in since I would be layering it. So, I decided to try to make chocolate cupcake wrappers out of melted vegan chocolate chips by using a silicone pastry brush to paint a thin layer of chocolate in the inside of my silicone cupcake wrappers (they were very excited to be used twice in one day after a month or two of neglect).

I left them in the freezer overnight to form the perfect level of resistance to the abuse that the placement of the tiramisu layers was sure to cause. Here’s the hard part: taking them out of the silicone wrappers without damaging them. I had a 8/10 survival rate due to a learning curve. So, unless you have already participated in this activity, you should probably make more than you actually need since some will likely be casualties. The secret to doing this, I found, is to take only one at a time from the freezer so the others don't melt, loosen the wrappers from the chocolate all the way around the perimeter, and then turn the silicone wrapper inside out to get the chocolate cup to come out without breaking.

I made the cupcakes with a vanilla cupcake recipe, subbing coffee and creamer for the milk traditionally used. 

Once cooled, cutting the cupcakes in half horizontally created 2 coffee cupcake layers. The first layer is a dollop of chocolate mousse.

The second layer is cake.

The third layer is chocolate mousse.

The fourth layer is cake.

The last layer is cream cheese frosting.

The garnish is cocoa powder.

Here's the birthday girl (a.k.a. C3) with her cupcake.

Here's Virginia photobombing Jessica's portrait with her cupcake.

Grooooooooossssssss. That's what my reaction would have been if I had read that a month ago. But now, my reaction has changed quite substantially. It all started when we were planning a craft day to help Lulu make decorations for her wedding (that's next month already!). Jocelyn remembered that Lulu's birthday was the same week, and that due to all the wedding planning/preparation, she would likely not be planning a birthday celebration this year. So, we decided to convert the craft day into a wedding planning/surprise birthday party for Lulu. Jocelyn, being the foodie that she is, sent us a pinterest board that Lulu filled with pins of food that she either likes or wants to try. That is where the meatloaf cupcake idea was born. 

I'm certain that when Lulu was pinning this, she was hoping for a meatloaf cupcake full of animals, but while I love her thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch, I love animals too, so she's getting a vegan version. I did quite a bit of online research to find a recipe that I thought would be good, and I settled on this one from Leanne Vogel. 

Since Leanne suggests lining your loaf pan with parchment paper, I wasn't sure if subbing cupcake liners would work, and I didn't want to take any chances with Lulu's birthday, so I made my own cupcake liners out of parchment paper. Here are the supplies that I used.

I started by cutting squares of parchment paper (they were around 4-5 inches square).

You can use any type of dish from your kitchen. I was making these at David's house, substantially limiting my dish selection, which is why I ended up with two different glasses. The larger glass was perfect for getting the shape.

Then the whiskey glass helped push the liner all the way to the bottom of the baking pan.

Once I started to pull the glass out, the paper would try to come out too, so I ended up filling each cup with meatloaf "batter" before moving onto making the next parchment liner. This method worked really well. I baked them for 18 minutes, which is the length of time I typically bake my dessert cupcakes, and when I took them out, they had browned lightly on top.

Next was the mashed potato icing. I usually make mashed potatoes with the skins on them because that's where most of the nutrition in a potato comes from, however, after trying to pipe strawberry icing once upon a time and having tiny pieces of strawberries get stuck in the tip, I will sacrifice nutrition in order to avoid the amount of angst that piping tip clogs happen to cause me. After I mashed the boiled potatoes, I whipped them with the whisk attachment in my kitchenaid with some earth balance, salt, and pepper. 

Once I piped the potatoes onto the lentil loaf cupcakes, I decorated them with some freshly cracked pepper and turmeric.

Shared on Healthy Vegan Fridays!

There are so many things to love about Kimmy (she says supper instead of dinner, she is always down to do awesome shit like roller skating in tutus, and she makes me want to be a better person), but one of the things that stands out the most is that she's so easy going. When I asked her what kind of cupcakes she wanted for her birthday, she said I could make whatever I wanted, but that she favors chocolate. So, not only do I get to make a cupcake that involves chocolate (as if there were other kinds), I get to choose what kind to make?! It's like Kimmy's birthday is my birthday too! The only caveat is that Kimmy is gluten-free, which is fine, because that just means that I had to challenge myself to come up with a gluten-free vegan cupcake recipe that was as delicious as a gluten-filled one. I'm not sure if I achieved it, but Kimmy liked them, and that's all that matters.

I decided to make a vegan gluten-free cupcake version of the samoa girl scout cookie. Since I'm not yet comfy with my gluten-free baking skills, I decided not to experiment with the cupcake part of the recipe. I followed the babycakes chocolate cupcake recipe verbatim. 

Then, instead of filling the cupcake liners 3/4 of the way like I usually do, I filled them about a third of the way, so I could add a small scoop of german chocolate icing (caramel sauce mixed with coconut) in the middle of each cupcake.

Then I topped each dollop with the remaining cupcake batter.

This meant I had extra batter leftover, with which I made mini cupcakes, so be prepared for this horrible dilemma. As is my typical GF baking experience, the cupcakes came out looking rather flat and pale, even though I filled them with more batter and used more cocoa powder than I normally do.

C'est la vie, as my mommy would say. By the time we cover them up, nobody will realize how badly they looked naked (which is pretty much how I feel about myself...and middle-aged, hairy, overweight men who think it's okay to mow their lawns without their shirts while I'm passing their houses...*shudder*).

So, now for the decorating (a.k.a. covering up the lackluster aesthetics of the post-baked version of these cupcakes).

I started with a basic buttercream icing.

1/2 c palm shortening

1/2 c earth balance - I always get the organic one. Not only because organic is obviously healthier, but the non-organic earth balance tastes gross to me.

1/2 tablespoon vanilla - I really like this madagascar vanilla that Rainbow Grocery sells.

1/8 c coconut milk - I could have used any kind of non-dairy milk, but since samoas are probably 75% coconut, I needed to add as many coconut-based ingredients as possible.

I whisked those ingredients together until it looked super creamy and shiny.

Then I sifted in 2 c of powdered sugar. 

I do this 1 cup at a time, whisking in between each addition.

So, here's where the recipe deviates from the traditional buttercream frosting. So, I noticed that Kimmy tries to avoid eating too much salt, and she rarely eats refined sugar. The combination of trying to avoid using the typical 4 cups of powdered sugar my recipe calls for and trying to add more coconut to the recipe led to a substitution of coconut for half of the sugar. Instead of adding the coconut in its shredded form, I learned a trick from my friend Melissa (who happens to be the best vegan baker I know). You blend the coconut!

I used the pulse button because I was scared of my blendtec getting all excited (like it tends to do), and turning the coconut into coconut butter. When it's done, it should be the consistency of a fine powder.

I added it to the icing and whisked it in, as if it were powdered sugar.

It ends up being the perfect consistency for piping.

The decorating of the cupcakes is usually the most fun part of the whole process for me, but by the time I got to this point, I was already running late for Kimmy's birthday party, so I did something I'm not proud of. I'm embarrassed to admit this on the internet, but I used my microwave to melt the chocolate. I always use the stove to melt chocolate, but I didn't want to miss too much of the party, so I had to take the snacks out of my microwave. 

Since I don't use my microwave for its intended purpose (it came with the house), I use it as a second pantry for all the things that I don't want to see when I open my main pantry because my willpower will not be able to resist grabbing those instead of real food. (P.S. I highly recommend those Tias to anyone who hasn't had them yet. They're like a healthier vegan version of Doritos.)

I put a half a bag of chocolate chips and a couple of tablespoons of coconut milk in a bowl. My microwave has buttons for melting chocolate.

After a minute or so, it beeps and the digital display tells me to stir the chocolate. 

If your microwave doesn't have this feature, you can just microwave it for 30 second intervals, stirring in between each. When it's ready, you'll know because there won't be anymore chunks and it will be smooth. It looks like this.

Then you just pour it into a squeeze bottle and drizzle the chocolate onto the cupcakes. Since Kimmy grew up in Canada, she has never actually seen a samoa, so she probably thought my drizzling looked dead on. The rest of you may judge my drizability (spellcheck thinks that's not a word, but it obviously is). This just gives you a reason to make these cupcakes and do a better job of decorating than I did.

Here's Kimmy enjoying her birthday cupcake(s).

The moment I walked into the cutest gluten-free, vegan bakery in Portland, I immediately felt an overwhelming sensation of feelings. They went from awe to a feeling of being underdressed, to a gluttony and longing to taste every single thing in there, to a euphoric feeling of being in love. It's official. I am in *love* with Petunia’s. San Francisco needs a bakery that’s vegan, gluten-free, and ultra cute! Who wants to open one with me????

There were 4 GF vegan cupcake flavors available today.  1. Hummingbird 

2. Coconut Passionberry

3. Double Chocolate 

4. Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana

I was planning to get the double chocolate cupcake, but David decided to discuss its resemblance to Dr. Slump, which made me reconsider my decision and go with the chocolate zucchini bread and the cutest cup of stumptown coffee ever. Yes, they even have Stumptown coffee. I want to live inside Petunia's forevermore.

Yesterday was my first time experiencing the other vegan, gluten-free bakery in Portland: Back to Eden. Shane experienced it twice yesterday (oink oink). My plan was to hit up Dovetail Bakery first, which is just a few blocks from Back to Eden on Alberta, but sadly, Shane informed me that Dovetail is closed (gasp!), and that a new place called sugarcube is moving into its location.  So, now I will have to go through my life never knowing what a dovetail scone tastes like. Sniff sniff. The best thing to heal from sadness is ice cream, and luckily, Back to Eden has lots of it! I got a chocolate soft serve ice cream cone. David and Shane shared a banana split made with coconut-based chocolate and vanilla ice cream, which could have been perfect except that it was void of whipped cream.

I also ordered a Broccoli Cheddar Tempeh Bacon Quiche and a Chocolate Salted Almond Cupcake to go so I would have something to eat for breakfast today while I wait for my (delayed) flight to board. The mini quiche was AMAZING, gluten-free, and cute like a little tart! There were five other cupcake flavors as well, including soy-free and sugar-free options.

My cupcake had the consistency of a muffin rather than a cupcake, but the icing was delicious, and it held up quite well, considering this was ordered at 4pm yesterday and rode around in a backpack until now.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of dining at the Native Foods in the LA area. I think at the time, there were 2 locations in that area. I don’t recall which one I visited (Santa Monica area maybe?), but I do remember that the vibe was kind of hippiesque and homegrown. So, when I saw that Portland had a Native Foods, I was excited to check it out. When I approached, I seriously thought that Google Maps had confused it with another Native Foods Cafe that was some fast food chain like TGIFridays. Reasons: it was inside a mall, decorated horribly, overly iridescently lit, and the employees were clean cut college kids. However, when I glanced inside the display case and saw the familiar cookbook from the original Native Foods, I realized that the world had turned upside down. I guess vegan fast food is the new thing with places like Veggie Grill and now Native Foods popping up in suburban malls. It’s weird, but I’m into it.

We ordered the BBQ Jackfruit sandwich and the Chicken Run Ranch Burger with a side salad and a chocolate cupcake.

I had assumed I would be getting a cupcake at SweetPea Baking Company where we had breakfast. I thought for sure I would have difficulty choosing which dessert to order from SweetPea since they now bake fresh (raised and cake) donuts every morning, but sadly after having voodoo Portland cream donuts at midnight last night, the donut options didn’t seem to compare. And if that weren’t sad enough, none of the 3 cupcake options had any chocolate in them! It’s a good thing the gravy on my biscuit and my cup of stumptown coffee filled the gaping hole left in my heart from the lack of chocolate cupcake options.

Not sure if you've heard, but cinnamon is the new black. Around a month ago, some researchers from UC Santa Barbara published a study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease that basically says that cinnamon prevents Alzheimer's disease. My friend and world renowned (or maybe just in North America) nutritionist, Kimmy Murphy, tells me that cinnamon also helps to regulate blood sugar. So, it was no surprise when I asked Jenn what kind of cupcakes I should make Emily for her birthday, and her response was to ask me if I had any recipes that had cinnamon in them.

I do happen to have a snickerdoodle cupcake recipe that I invented for Whitney's birthday, but a girl can only have so many chocolate-less desserts in her lifetime, so my goal for Emily's birthday this year was to make a chocolate-snickerdoodle-hybrid cupcake.

When a chocolate cupcake and a snickerdoodle cupcake get married and have babies, they basically consist of this. A chocolate cupcake with cinnamon added to the recipe. Topped with a layer of chocolate ganache.

Topped with icing. 

Sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. 

 Viola.

Here's the super-cute birthday girl enjoying her cupcake.

And me and Jen trying not to eat all of the rest of them.