Vegan Red Velvet Cupcake

So many people love red velvet cake and cupcakes. I haven’t ever really been one of them, probably because I was never given too many opportunities to try them. When I finally had a red velvet cupcake several years ago in New York, I was underwhelmed. The flavor wasn’t very memorable – mainly it was just pretty. But then I made them myself a few weeks ago, and I got why they were special: chocolate.

Don’t mistake me – red velvet cupcakes don’t have a very strong chocolate flavor, but you do have a hint of it, which is sometimes all you need. This particular recipe is a winner because the flavor, color and texture is all exactly what you’d want in a red velvet cupcake. It’s sweet, mild on the chocolate, the color is a lovely shade of dark red, and moist, plus the cupcake holds together pretty well. The frosting is not very thick, but it complements the cupcake with a creamy, sugary finish. I shared these cupcakes with some friends, none vegan, and they all agreed that they were delicious!

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes
This recipe is taken from Food.com
Yields approximately 12 cupcakes

For the Cupcakes:

• 1 cup vegan milk
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup vegan granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons vegan red food coloring* or two small bottles of red food coloring
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon chocolate extract, optional (this can be hard to find, so omit it if you cannot locate it in your local store)

For the Frosting:

• 1/4 cup vegan butter, softened
• 1/4 cup vegan cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups vegan powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line muffin pans with liners.

Whisk together the vegan milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle. Note that I have only used soy milk in this recipe, so I do not know if other vegan milks will thicken in this step.

Curdling soy milk with apple cider vinegar

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix.

Sifting the dry ingredients

Add the oil, food coloring, chocolate extract (if using), vanilla extract and almond extract to the curdled soy milk. Whisk well to combine.

You'll use about two small bottles of red food coloring

Make well in center of dry ingredients and gently fold wet ingredients into dry, mixing until large lumps disappear. Do not over mix, or your cupcakes will turn out gummy – small lumps are okay.

Finishing up the batter

Fill cupcake liners about three-quarters full as these cupcakes will rise fairly high. And make sure you use the right size of cupcake liners – mine were too small for my pan, but I used them anyway!

Filling the liners with the batter

Place in hot oven and bake 18-20 minutes until done, or until toothpick inserted in the center of one of the cupcakes comes out clean.

Cool cupcakes in the pan for five mintues, and then transfer to a cooling rack or surface to cool completely.

Cooling on the rack

Using a hand mixer (or by hand), cream together the vegan butter and vegan cream cheese until just combined.

Mixing it all by hand

Whip in the powdered sugar in 1/2 cup batches. Scrape down the sides and mix until smooth and creamy. Mix in the vanilla.

Now it just needs to chill to firm up a bit

Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use.

When ready, spread some frosting on each of the cupcakes.

Spreading frosting on red velvet cupcakes

Then serve and enjoy!

Worth it.

What is your favorite cupcake?

Easy chilled peach soup

Some of you may remember that last summer I discovered that I was seemingly allergic to one of my absolute favorite fruits: peaches. I was extremely disappointed when I found that my mouth felt like cotton and my tongue itched. These are weird sensations to experience anyway, but when it is in direct relation to a long-loved fruit like peaches, it is so disappointing. This year, I seem to not be experiencing the same symptoms – or at least not as strong – so I am trying to still get my fix of summer peaches.

But let’s get to the important matter at hand – cold soup, most specifically cold peach soup. Soup and summers don’t generally mix, but this soup does the trick. It uses what is in season, plus a few other ingredients that are always available at your grocery store, and it’s easy to make. My suggestion would be to serve this at brunch, or as a first course with a small side salad drizzled with a raspberry vinaigrette. And of course, it’s perfect as a refreshing dessert after a heavy or spicy meal.

Chilled Peach Soup
Based upon the Pretty Peach Soup recipe found at Allrecipes.com
Serves 4 to 6

• 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, thawed
• 1-2 tablespoons water
• 3 cups fresh or frozen peaches, thawed
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice, or the juice of 2 small lemons
• 1-2 tablespoons water
• 1 cup peach nectar (you may substitute another nectar or fruit juice if peach nectar is unavailable)
• 1 cup plain vegan yogurt
• 1/4 cup vegan sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract

Place raspberries in a blender; cover and process until smooth. If you are using frozen raspberries that have not been thawed, you may find that it will be easier to blend them with one or two tablespoons of water (or even three).

Making raspberry puree

Strain and discard seeds. It will be easier to strain if you use a spoon or spatula to scrape the bottom of the sieve. Once it is strained, cover and refrigerate the puree.

Straining raspberry seeds

Whether you use fresh or frozen peaches, make sure they're pesticide-free

Place peaches and lemon juice in the blender; cover and process until smooth. If using frozen peaches that are not thawed, you may need to add one to two tablespoons of water in case they have a hard time blending. Transfer to a bowl.

Making a peach puree

Stir or whisk in nectar, vegan yogurt, vegan sugar if needed (if fruit is tart) and almond or vanilla extract. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

I taste-tested the soup before adding the sugar in case it wasn't needed, then I whisked it into the soup

To garnish with the puree, drizzle about one tablespoon of the raspberry puree in a large circle on top of each serving. Grab a toothpick or knife to start in on the design.

Now to garnish

Use a toothpick to draw six or eight lines toward the center of circle, forming a flower. Or you can do other designs, too. Just do whatever feels creative and fun for you, and if you mess up – don’t worry, it’s pretty anyway.

Making the final touches before serving

This soup is lovely and would be the perfect accompaniment to any meal. I would only recommend that you do not serve this on its own as it is quite sweet, and really needs something else to balance it out.

Beautiful for serving

Do you have any favorite cold summer soups?

Pretty any way you look at it

Vegan Jam Filled Butter Cookies

Even though I don’t really celebrate Easter, it is one of my favorite holidays. I love it today for the same reasons why I loved it as a kid – the egg-hunting (What do vegans hunt? Tofu? Chocolate? Seitan?), the Easter Bunny, the basket of goodies, the pastels, the flowers. Plus it’s a holiday that always equals springtime to me and I love spring in ways I just don’t love the other seasons of the year.

Despite the fact that I don’t really celebrate like I used to, I still try to acknowledge it through something sweet and delicious. (Remember this crumb cake? To die for!) This year, I had been thinking I wanted to try to make jam-filled butter cookies. I don’t normally gravitate towards these kinds of cookies, but I wanted to expand my horizons. I am so glad I did – these are so super easy and fast to make, delicious and you can make them with most any kind of jam you like. I made these with strawberry jam, but you can make them with raspberry jam (probably best to go with seedless), and I bet orange marmalade would be great, too.

Note: In the first picture in my post you’ll see cookies made with coconut palm sugar, but in the step-by-step photos I am using regular vegan cane sugar. These cookies tasted good both ways, but in my opinion the cane sugar version tasted far better. When using a recipe like this one with so few ingredients, the unique flavor of the coconut palm sugar comes out more and doesn’t taste quite as good. But feel free to experiment!

Vegan Jam-Filled Butter Cookies
Recipe based on Berry Shortbread Dreams from Allrecipes.com

• 1 cup vegan butter, softened
• 2/3 cup vegan sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup of your favorite jam, or a variety of jams

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a mixing bowl, cream the vegan butter and sugar. Beat in extract.

Mixing together the vegan butter, sugar and extract

Gradually add your flour until dough forms a ball, then cover and refrigerate for one hour or until easy to handle.

See, this is super fast!

Roll into one-inch balls, then place about one-inch apart on ungreased baking sheets (make sure they are far enough apart as they do flatten in baking).

Rolling cookie dough into one-inch balls

Using the end of a spoon handle or using your thumb, make an indentation in the center.

Be sure to not push all the way down!

Fill each hole with a little jam.

Finally filling the cookies with jam

And they're ready to pop in the oven!

Bake for 14 to 18 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. You may spoon additional jam into cookies if desired as they are cooling, but be sure to let them sit out a little while to allow the jam to set and the cookies to fully cool.

Done!

These are perfect for parties – and again so so fast to make. I made a double batch for a fundraiser earlier this year and they were a hit! Good thing I ate a few to taste test beforehand. ;)

A tasty little Easter basket

What is your favorite thing about Easter?

Vegan Witches Fingers

As I am getting older, I am realizing more distinctly what I love about each holiday – and most of the time it almost always has something to do with the food, whether I am making it or eating it. What I love most about Halloween is the creativity and creepiness of the recipes – tombstone cookies, frog spawn tea, eyeball appetizers (although it doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?). It’s probably the holiday where the cook or baker has the most creative license to make something utterly horrifying and delicious at the same time.

This year I could not figure out what I wanted to make, but I finally settled on a recipe that I felt would be easy for not just me to make, but for you as well. I decided to make witches fingers – firm, yet melt in your mouth cookies. I knew I had a real winner of a recipe on my hands when, as I was finishing up the last cookies and putting them on the cookie sheet, my husband declared (gleefully) that they looked disgusting and realistic. Perfect!

Witches Fingers
This vegan recipe is a modified version of the Spooky Witches Fingers recipe on Allrecipes.com, and yields approximately 30 cookies if you make larger fingers or 60 cookies if you make smaller fingers.

• 1 cup vegan butter, softened
• 1 cup vegan confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground flax seed mixed with 3 tablespoons hot water, or use egg replacer for 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup whole, blanched almonds

Combine the vegan butter, sugar, flax seed mixture or egg replacer, almond extract and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl. Beat together with an electric mixer.

Mixing together wet ingredients and sugar

As it is mixing gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Mixing cookie dough for witches fingers

Once your dough is well mixed, refrigerate it for 20 to 30 minutes. This will make the dough easier to handle when you are shaping the witches fingers.

Just before you take the dough out of the refrigerator, preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease baking sheets, or use silicone baking mats.

Remove the dough from your refrigerator, and using a teaspoon or tablespoon scoop a heaping spoonful onto a piece of wax paper.

Tip: If you use a teaspoon you will get about 60 cookies; if you use a tablespoon you will get about 30 cookies.

Spoonful of cookie dough

Use the wax paper to roll the dough into a thin finger-shaped cookie.

Rolling out the cookie dough for witches fingers

Press one almond into one end of each cookie to give the appearance of a long fingernail.

Pressing the almond, a.k.a. fingernail, into the cookie

Squeeze cookie near the tip and again near the center of each to give the impression of knuckles. You can also cut into the dough with a sharp knife at the same points to help give a more finger-like appearance.

Giving the cookie a finger-like shape and look

Arrange the shaped cookies on the baking sheets, being sure to give each cookie a little space so that they do not bake into each other.

Witches fingers ready to bake

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or until the cookies are slightly golden in color. If your cookies are larger, it may take more time for them to bake.

Optional: After you have allowed your cookies to cool, remove the almond from the end of each cookie. Squeeze a small amount of red decorating gel (not all decorating gels are vegan, so be sure to check the ingredients) or melted chocolate into the cavity. Replace the almond to cause the gel or chocolate to ooze out around the tip of the cookie.

Spooky...and yummy!

These are so delicious that I am having a hard time not eating them all at once! I can see how they are perfect for parties – they’re great finger-food! Muhahahahaha!! I am so funny, it’s scary! :)

What are you making for Halloween this year?

Valentine’s Day is probably one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it’s because of all the girlie colors and hearts and flowers, or because of the shallow romance courtesy of department stores, but I just can’t help but like it. Of course, I’m sure that I resented the holiday when I was single or forlorn over someone that wouldn’t “Be Mine”. That’s probably a given. Now Valentine’s Day offers me an excuse to get into the kitchen and try to make something that has equal parts romance and flour and KitchenAid mixer.

This year I was (sort of) inspired to make sugar cookies because of the one thing that I do dislike about Valentine’s Day – conversation hearts. While they are cute, they taste pretty, well, nasty. I apologize if you enjoy the taste of conversation hearts, but I’d be happy without them or with a version that tasted more like chocolate than chalk. Even though my cookies have nothing conversational about them, I somehow thought that something sugary in the shape of a heart would be a nice substitute to those candies.

This isn’t my recipe, but I went with a recipe that appears to work and be popular among us vegans which is always a good sign when I set out to make a recipe I’ve not made before.

Vegan Sugar Cookies
This recipe was taken from www.johnandkristie.com. This makes about 36 cookies.

• 1 cup vegan butter, like Earth Balance or Soy Garden
• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup vegan white sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 whole egg replacements (Ener-G)
• 1/4 cup Tofutti cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar.

Add or stir in the egg replacements and vanilla. Gradually add the flour, baking powder and tofu cream cheese.

You may have to use your hands at this point to finish the mixing. Form the dough into a long loaf, or divide in half and press into two flat rounds, and wrap in cellophane. Refrigerate for a couple hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease the cookie sheets, use a non-stick foil or parchment paper.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness.

Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters.

Place about 1 inch apart cookie on sheets.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, until bottoms and edges just start to get light brown. Remove from baking sheet and cool on wire racks. Store in an airtight container.

Icing
This is also taken from www.johnandkristie.com. Each batch is enough to easily coat 24 cookies.

• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract (I used vanilla extract instead)
• 6-8 teaspoons of soy milk or another non-dairy milk
• Assorted food coloring
• 4 teaspoons of light corn syrup (I used agave nectar)

In medium bowl, stir together confectioners’ sugar and soy milk until smooth.

Beat in corn syrup (or agave) and almond extract (or vanilla extract) until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup/agave.

Add food coloring to desired intensity. To make pink I used probably 2 or 3 drops of red, and to make purple I used about 5 drops of red and one drop of blue.

Dip cookies and allow to dry. You can dry them overnight or for a couple of hours before storing.

This recipe made A LOT of cookies. Maybe I rolled the dough out more thinly than I should have, but I still have quite a few cookies leftover. This last weekend seemed to be Samantha’s Sugar Festival of 2009, so I opted to take in the rest of the presentable cookies to work. My co-workers ate and enjoyed them, and I confess I had four…or five. They were within arms reach, okay?! Anyway, it’s always rewarding to see non-vegan people eat the vegan stuff (of course, I didn’t spread the word they were vegan) and say that it’s good.

What about you? Do you love or hate Valentine’s Day? If it’s the latter, I still recommend making these cookies, but instead of a heart I’d use a random cookie cutter shape like a dinosaur or maybe a train or flag. I bought a whole set of cookie cutters just to get a heart cookie cutter (really, I have wanted a full set, so it wasn’t just so I could have a heart shaped cutter), and believe me when I say that some of this batch turned into cats and hands. I just couldn’t help myself with the randomness.