Apple Cider Cupcakes

So, the favorite for Cupcake Battle Round 2, and (arguably) the overall Cupcake Challenge were the Apple Cider Cupcakes. Despite that, we were also able to improve the flavor further by adding a little bit of green apple extract to the frosting. DELICIOUS! They definitely remind me of fall, caramel apples, and apple cider. Mmmmm!

Ingredients
2 cups apple cider
1 tbsp agar flakes or 1 tsp agar powder
2 cinnamon sticks
½ tsp whole cloves
½ tsp whole allspice
½ cup apple butter
¼ cup maple syrup
¾ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting
Caramel Brown Rice Glaze
cinnamon sugar or ground cinnamon for sprinkling

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (325 for mini-cupcakes). Line a muffin tray with cupcake liners.
2. Place apple cider, agar agar, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and allspice in a small saucepan. If using agar flakes, let mixture soak for 10 minutes; if using powder, proceed to the next step.
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together the apple butter, maple syrup, sugar, vegetable oil, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla.
5. Bring the apple cider mixture to a boil, then lower heat to bring to a low rolling boil, careful not to let it boil over. Boil for about 15 minutes until the cider is reduced to 1 ¼ cups and the agar agar is dissolved. (If the cider hasn’t reduced enough, boil longer. If it has reduced too much, add extra apple cider to make up for the difference.) Stir frequently because the agar agar tends to stick to the sides of the pan.
6. Strain the apple cider and discard the spices. Let cool to lukewarm, then add the apple cider to the apple butter mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture to the we3t ingredients in roughly three batches, mixing well after each addition.
7. Spray the cupcake liners with nonstick cooking spray. Fill each liner three-quarters full. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
8. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

To assemble:
1. Pipe the buttercream frosting onto the cupcakes and sprinkle some cinnamon or cinnamon sugar on top of it. Use a spoon to drizzle the caramel over the frosting. It would be cute to stick a cinnamon stick onto the frosting if you are feeling fancy-pants.

Note: The spices called for are in their whole form. If you can’t find whole spices, add ¼ tsp each ground cinnamon and ground allspice and ⅛ tsp ground cloves to the flour mixture.

Cupcakes, Part 2

Round 2 of the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World recipe-testing challenge was quite a major success! The contestants for the week were (pictured in order going clockwise from the upper left) Pistachio Rosewater, Gingerbread w/Lemony Frosting, Apple Cider, and Chai Latte!

The overwhelming favorite for that week was the Apple Cider Cupcakes. I thought they were great, but was a little underwhelmed by the lack of apple-y flavor, particularly in the frosting. Even so, it was well-loved enough to get an overwhelming pass for our holiday dinner menu! To try to correct them, we experimented in increasing the apple-ness of the cupcakes by adding applesauce to the top of the frosting to bring out the flavor. For the party, we would want to experiment with apple extract, since putting applesauce on top ruined the look of it... We would prefer adding extra apple flavor without changing how the cupcake looked.

The my personal favorite for the evening was the Gingerbread with Lemony Frosting. The dark, rich gingerbread cupcake wasn't overly sweet, and balanced nicely with the frosting. However, once again, we felt that the flavor of the frosting was slightly underwhelming, so we increased the lemon flavor by adding lemon juice to the frosting. This watered down the frosting, so for the party we would again experiment with extracts to increase the flavor. Also, we decided the color was too pale, so we added a few drops of yellow food coloring to make the lemon flavor of the frosting a bit more obvious.

The Pistachio Rosewater cupcakes were quite interesting! We found that people either loved them or hated them. They had a nice, refreshing quality to them, and found that they were very pretty if we tinted rosewater-flavored buttercream pink, piped the frosting into the shape of flowers, then dusted them with crushed pistachio meat. We also just iced them as indicated in the recipe, but we found people who liked them generally preferred the buttercream. We ended up deciding to include them for the holiday dinner, even some people didn't care for them. They were light and refreshing, which balanced out some of the richer, more decadent cupcakes.

The last cupcake recipe we tested was the Chai Latte. It was a pretty good recipe, but definitely not as good as the others. Given the choice, I would have preferred the Mexican Hot Chocolate from Round 1, rather than this one. Of course, Chai lovers, like this cupcake, but we felt that the other cupcakes shadowed this one. So even though it wasn't a bad cupcake, we decided that this one would not be in the running to be part of the holiday dinner.

And so, with only two rounds of cupcake-testing done, it seems we'd picked 4 out of our maximum of 6 cupcake flavors, with two in reserve as maybes! We were definitely impressed by this week's slew of cupcakes. Even if all the rest of the cupcakes we test fail, we would still be in good shape for the holiday dinner!

Maple Cupcakes with Creamy Maple Frosting and Sugared Walnuts

The Maple Walnut Cupcakes were the first to be chosen to be featured in our Third Annual Vegan Holiday Dinner! After the first round of cupcake testing, this recipe was the only one to survive the first elimination (one got cut; the other two were placed on the maybe list... See this post to read about the challenge!)

Maple Cupcakes with Creamy Maple Frosting and Sugared Walnuts
This recipe calls for candying the walnuts before using in the recipes. Alternatively, the walnuts could just be toasted and used as is.

Ingredients:
½ cup soy milk
½ tsp apple cider vinegar
1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
½ cup maple syrup
⅓ cup canola oil
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 ¼ tsp maple extract
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup sugared walnuts (recipe below), finely chopped (measure first, then chop)
creamy maple frosting (recipe below)

For the Sugared Walnuts:
1 cup walnut halves
⅓ cup granulated sugar
3 tbsp maple syrup
dash salt
dash ground cinnamon

Directions:
-To make the sugared walnuts:
1. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Spread the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for 6 to 8 minutes. Open oven and shake the pan after about 4 minutes. Watch carefully so as not to burn! Remove from oven and place in a bowl to cool. Lightly grease a large piece of parchment paper and have it ready because you will need it at the end of the next step.
2. Pour sugar, maple syrup, and salt into a large, cold, heavy-bottom skillet. Turn heat to medium and stir with a wooden spoon till sugar starts to melt and bubble, about 5 minutes. Continue stirring and cook another 3 to 4 minutes until mixture is thick, amber-brown, and smells like caramel. Remove from heat and quickly stir in the walnuts and cinnamon, stirring to coat each nut. Immediately spread coated walnuts on greased parchment paper, using a spatula to spread out the nuts and avoid forming large clusters. Allow to cool completely on sheet before handling or eating.

-To make cupcakes:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (325 for mini cupcakes). Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl; set aside and allow to curdle for a few minutes.
3. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg into a separate bowl and mix. Whisk the maple syrup, oil, brown sugar, and vanilla, and maple extract into the soy milk mixture. Form a well in the dry ingredients and pour into wet ingredients, stirring till large lumps are gone; fold in chopped sugared walnuts. Fill cupcake liners two-thirds of the way. Bake 20 to 22 minutes. Transfer to cooling racks to cool completely. Frost with Creamy Maple Frosting and sprinkle with sugared walnuts.


Creamy Maple Frosting
⅔ cup maple syrup
¾ cup margarine, softened
⅔ cup soy milk powder
1 tsp maple extract
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat together the softened margarine and maple syrup. It might look a little curdly but that’s ok. Beat in the vanilla and the maple extract, then slowly add soy milk powder a little bit at a time. The frosting should be creamy and fluffy. If it looks too wet, add a little more soy milk powder. If too stiff, drizzle in a little more maple syrup. The frosting can be stored in fridge until ready to use; just allow to sit at room temperature 10 minutes to soften.


Note!
This recipe came from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Cupcakes, Part 1!

When we started planning our holiday dinner, we decided we wanted to have an assortment of mini-cupcakes so that our guests could have a tiny bites of delight after their meal. So from Halloween to Thanksgiving, we tested recipes every week to decide which cupcakes made the cut! All the recipes we tried came from a wonderful little book called Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. For the first week, we tried out Maple Walnut, Cookies & Cream, Dulce Sin Leche, and Mexican Chocolate Chip (pictured above, listed clockwise starting from the upper left).

Based on our preferences, as well as those of our friends, the Maple Walnut Cupcakes were surprisingly by far the best of the group! While we expected them to be good, they exceeded our expectations by being fantastic!

People liked both chocolate cupcakes equally well. This was also surprising since we expected the Cookies and Cream to be more popular than the Mexican Hot Chocolate. However, the Mexican Hot Chocolates were fudgier and had a better depth of flavor than the Cookies & Cream's; in fact, the C&C's (while good) seemed like they were missing a little richness. The biggest problem with the Mexican Hot Chocolates was their crumbliness. They lacked a bit of structure and ended up falling apart before you could eat them!

The biggest disappointment (for me, at least) were the Dulce Sin Leche. They weren't bad, but with a name like that, we expected them to taste a little more decadent than they did. I'd even venture to say that the Maple Walnuts had the richness & decadence we expected from the Dulce's!

In the end we decided that we would definitely serve the Maple Walnuts at the party. We placed both chocolate cupcakes on the "maybe" list, depending on how our other test recipes panned out. The Dulce's were the first to be completely cut from the running!

For now, I'm only going to share the recipes that were chosen for the Holiday Dinner. However, if there's interest, I could also share other recipes once I've done all the ones from the Dinner Party.

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting

¼ cup nonhydrogenated margarine, softened
¼ cup vegan cream cheese, softened
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream together margarine and cream cheese until combined. Use a handhelf mixer to whipe while adding the confectioners sugar in ½ cup batches. Mix until smooth and creamy, then mix in the vanilla. Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use.

Brown Rice Caramel Glaze

Ingredients
½ cup full-fat soy milk
¼ cup soy milk powder
1 tbsp arrowroot
½ cup brown rice syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions
1. In a small saucepan, whisk together soy milk, soy milk powder, and arrowroot. Stir constantly over medium heat until arrowroot is cooked and mixture starts to thicken, about 4 minutes. Stir in brown rice syrup, turn up heat to medium high, and bring to a gentle boil, then bring heat back down so mixture is at a low simmer, all the while stirring constantly. Cook until mixture is thick and slightly reduced, about 10 minutes. Sauce will have a thick consistency, like cake batter. Whisk in vanilla and remove from heat.
2. Allow to cool 10 minutes before spreading on warm cupcakes.

Tip: To measure out brown rice syrup, first rub canola oil on measuring cups. This will allow the syrup to slide easily out.

Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting

Makes about 4 cups’ worth, so you can halve the recipe if you are going to spreading the frosting rather than piping it.

½ cup nonhydrogenated shortening
½ cup nonhydrogenated margarine (we use Earth Balance)
3 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted if clumpy
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup plain soy milk or soy creamer

Beat the shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the vanilla and soy milk. Beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.