Posts Tagged ‘vegan’
Valentine’s Day Cupcakes
Monday, March 29th, 2010So now that it’s almost April and I’m planning Easter cupcakes, I decided I should finally get around to posting the Valentine’s Day cupcakes I made. Admittedly, I wasn’t originally going to post these. I feel like they’re a little on the sloppy side. But hey, I made’em so I’ll post’em – I feel like otherwise this blog is sort of just “cute” stuff (which I missed last week.. again).
Valentine’s day fell on a long weekend (Family day), so Matt and I went Stateside to go snowboarding with our friends Lyndsey and Dave at Kissing Bridge and Holiday Valley. Since it was Valentine’s day and we were two couples, I figured I’d make us some lovey dovey cupcakes!
They’re my standard vegan vanilla cupcakes with vegan vanilla buttercream.
Tags: cupcakes, seasonal, valentine's, vegan
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Maple Walnut Cupcakes
Thursday, February 11th, 2010If you happen to follow me on twitter, then you may have seen me mention making maple cupcakes for a party to welcome our friend’s new wife to Canada. Get it? Maple cupcakes.. Canada.. yeah, you get it.
I’d never made any recipes using anything other than sugar for sweetness, so this was a change. Not so much for the cupcakes as for the icing; I never really realized, but icing made with icing sugar has a bit of a crystally texture to it – you can kind of feel the sugar when chewing it. But since there was no sugar, the icing was super smooth and silky.
I also thought it would be neat to make maple candies to top the cupcakes with. I bought maple leaf molds to keep with the theme. Unfortunately it didn’t work out exactly as planned – I’d never made candy before and don’t know my stove too well yet (boiling water is one thing, but I haven’t used it much besides on the high setting), so I think I had the element too hot and ended up rushing it a little. The syrup ended up getting a little crystallized once it cooled (although maybe that’s what it was supposed to do..), and on top of that, it wouldn’t come out the molds. I only managed to get one out intact. But it still tasted good and I figured chunks of it would still work on top!
With the maple leaf shaped maple candy:
And with a non-leaf-shaped chunk of maple candy:
I wasn’t thrilled with the taste of the batter or even the icing when I first made them, but once the cupcakes were baked with the toasted walnuts added, and I guess after the icing sat overnight, they turned out to be pretty tasty! Which was a good thing, because real maple syrup costs A LOT, so it would have been sad if I’d wasted it all!
Tags: cupcakes, vegan
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Shortbread Type Cookies – A Childhood Favourite!
Monday, January 18th, 2010I finally got a chance to do some baking over the weekend – we had a lazy Sunday so I whipped up a batch of “shortbread type cookies”, which was a Christmas favourite in my house growing up. My mom would make them other times of the year too, because they’re both simple and delicious! And they can easily be made vegan too! (I didn’t make this batch vegan just because I didn’t think of it).
I actually prefer these cookies to shortbread – they’re sweet and flaky and buttery. I find they have more flavour to them than shortbread. They’re a staple if you want to make cutouts, and since I recently bought some cookie cutters from IKEA, and had some little tiny ones I got from Williams-Sonoma a year or so ago that I’d only used once, this was a perfect time to use this tried and tested recipe!
So here they are!
(I need better lighting in my kitchen or a bigger flash for my camera that the lens doesn’t block for close ups)
Isn’t that moose one HUGE?! And then there’s the little tiny ones in contrast.. fun!
Tags: cookies, vegan
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Mini Cupcakes – Chai Latte & Chocolate Mint
Sunday, December 6th, 2009I’ve finally been able to do a bit of baking again now that we’re getting a bit more settled in our new condo. First, I made my first-ever batch of mini cupcakes for a co-worker’s birthday. I made him Chai Latte cupcakes, and decided to use my mini pans that I got for shower and wedding gifts. Instead of plain black tea that was called for in the recipe, I thought it would be even better to use my favourite tea, pumpkin chai from David’s Tea. I topped them with icing sugar and a cinnamon-nutmeg-chocolate mix. They were delicious!
My least favourite part of making them was when I dropped the bag of icing sugar on the floor…
Thankfully the bag was almost empty so it didn’t make TOO much of a mess!
Yesterday was our sailing club’s Christmas party, so naturally I brought cupcakes! I made chocolate mint cupcakes, in full size and mini. A side note to these cupcakes: I tried to make chocolate mint cupcakes to bring to our families’ houses last Christmas and NO stores had any mint extract! So I bought some after Christmas and have been waiting to use it since..
So I made these ones vegan, since there is a vegan at our sailing club. The icing turned out to be a bit runny, and didn’t turn out looking very pretty on the full sized cupcakes, so I only took pictures of the minis, which turned out looking really cute despite the less than solid frosting!
Tags: cupcakes, mini, vegan
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The Wedding Cupcakes!
Sunday, November 8th, 2009So we’re back from the honeymoon, and it’s back to business! Well, we’re also now in the process of moving into our condo, so I don’t promise that I’ll be posting a lot yet. But I digress..
So, the wedding cupcakes. I’m going to tell you the whole process.
Steps #1 + 2 – Batter & Icing + Freezing
Thanksgiving weekend was the week before the wedding so I used that extra time to eat turkey. And make the batter and icing for the wedding cupcakes to be frozen. The plan was that I was going to make it all on the Saturday, but we got stuck in ridiculous traffic when we went for what was supposed to be a short trip to a mall. So I ended up doing it in a few goes over the next couple of days (in between going to two Thanksgiving dinners). I made batter for 6 dozen vegan vanilla cupcakes, and two batches of vegan fluffy vanilla buttercream (my recipe makes A LOT – I even had some left over!). Then I put it all into some airtight containers and popped them into the freezer for the week.
Step #3 – Baking
On the Thursday morning before our wedding, I took all of the batter & icing containers out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to start thawing out. We had our rehearsal dinner that night, and then after we got home I got to baking, then let the cupcakes cool overnight.
Step #4 – Icing
My boss thankfully let me take the day before the wedding off work. So that morning I got to icing! I bought some plastic cupcake containers (the kind you get at the grocery store etc) from McCall’s so that we’d be able to easily transport all 6 doz cupcakes to the venue in one shot.
Finished Product!
Here they are at the wedding (this photo is by Brooks Reynolds, who is amazing and I would highly recommend to anyone.)
And remember how our friend Lisa was making our cake topper? Look how amazing it is!
(First photo by Roman Kliotzkin, Lisa’s boyfriend, second by Brooks Reynolds)
Tags: cupcakes, vegan, wedding
Posted in Baking Adventures | 4 Comments »