Banana Caramel Cupcakes

Over ripe bananas. What do you do? Muffins? Loaf? Pancakes?

Naturally, my answer is CUPCAKES. Naturally.

I made the cupcake just plain banana. Nothing fancy. I bet chocolate chips would be awesome (1/2 c or so?). Next time I might throw in 1/2 tsp or maybe a full tsp of cinnamon too.


Makes 12 cupcakes
1 c mashed over ripe bananas
1/3 c oil
1/4 c 'milk'
2/3 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350; line a muffin pan with cupcake papers.

Mix the banana, oil, milk and sugar, beating well with a fork. Stir in the vanilla.

Sift in the dry ingredients. Mix with the fork, but be careful not to over-beat. No one likes tough cupcakes. Divide into liners, filling about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 - 22 minutes, remove from oven, and let cool in the pan for a couple of minutes before removing to a rack to cool the rest of the way.

Caramel Sauce
The sauce crystallized which is really annoying. It tastes fine; I also added about a tablespoon of rum so that we would kind of get a bananas foster effect to the finished cupcake. I used almond milk instead of soy cream or mimiccreme, so maybe that's the problem; I'll try with a cream next time and see how it does.

Frosting
1/2 c room temperature Earth Balance
1/4 c + 2 tbsp caramel sauce
2 c icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp butter flavour
More caramel sauce
A little cinnamon

Beat the Earth Balance until light and fluffy. Add the caramel sauce and beat until well incorporated. Add the sugar in two batches, adding a bit of milk in between if it gets too stiff. Add the extracts, beat in, then frost your cupcakes.

Drizzle the caramel over the cupcakes; dust with a little cinnamon. Eat!

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

My heart is full of love for cupcakes.

I can't make enough cupcakes. The next major holiday is Easter, that means Spring cupcakes like Carrot Cake and Lemon Meringue. We'll discuss the challenges of vegan meringue at some point. Also, Valentine's Day is soon. Mexican Snickerdoodle cupcakes? Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes? Plain vanilla cupcakes with red buttercream? Making some of my own flavours is the focus of Cupcake Challenge 2.0. Recreating well known non-vegan faves and making up some new combos!

At any rate, today it's crappy and dreary out there, so I thought something summery and uplifting would be the ticket - pink lemonade cupcakes!

Like the cupcakes of your dreams. If you have Dr Seuss dreams.

Cupcakes - More or less based on VCTOTW Margarita Cupcakes
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon (my lemon was juicy, so this turned out to be 1/4 c + 2 tbsp juice)
1 c milk
1/4 c canola oil
3/4 c sugar
2 tsp lemon extract
1/2 tsp raspberry extract
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/3c flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350; line a cupcake pan.
Whisk everything from the zest through to the vanilla extract together until well combined. Sift in the dry ingredients and mix well until perfectly combined. Add some colour if you want; I used fuchsia food colouring gel because the icing is bright yellow, but you can do what you want!
Bake for 20 - 22 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes in the pan before removing the cupcakes to a rack to finish cooling.

Icing
1/2 c margarine
1/4 c shortening
3 1/2 c icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp lemon extract
yellow food colouring gel

Cream the marg and shortening together till fluffy. Add the sugar in 3 increments, alternating with a tbsp of the juice. Add the zest and the colouring and beat until smooth and delicious. Ice those bitches!

One last picture because they're so pretty.

Delicious Lentils.

It's really easy to fall into a trap where as a vegetarian you end up eating soy products an awful lot. December was definitely one of those months and whether or not the whole cancer thing is true, it's always better to have a more diverse group of foods in your diet rather than letting things get stagnant and eating the same thing day in, day out. Back to the bean!

Or legume. We had Isa Chandra's Upside Down Lentil Shepherd's Pie for dinner tonight and it was scrumdiddlyumptious. Served over dijon mashed potatoes and with a glass of merlot, you can't go wrong! I ended up using about half red lentils and half green because I was too lazy to find du Puy lentils the other day - I would have had to go downtown *gasp* and I just didn't feel like it. Also, do try to find the Worcestershire sauce - it definitely adds a little sumthin sumthin. I've made it without, as well, so I'm not just saying stuff.

Oh, yeah, and I added corn instead of peas because it's what I had.

Not Cupcakes

The last couple of times I've made cupcakes I've been all "Yeah! Gotta make cupcakes!" and then made them and not actually wanted to eat any, so they've been donated to the worthy cause of the stomachs of the people with whom I work. I decided it was time to talk about something else then, too.

I love multi coloured quinoa. It's the perfect side to this orange tofu and braised baby bok choy.

For the bok choy, heat a little olive oil (mediumish heat) in a wide shallow pan, add some well cleaned bok choy and a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed. Give it a stir, add a splash of water, and cover and let steam until crispy and bright green, just a few minutes.

Holiday Cupcakes & Pigwidgeon Ornament

Made some Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese icing and some Red Velvet with plain cream cheese icing.

My mom gave us this owl ornament for the tree. We call it Pigwidgeon. <3 Not food related, but adorable.

Feelin' Like Baking

Are you getting sick of cupcakes yet? No, me neither.

Chocolate Cupcakes with 'Abombinaball' icing. If you remember from my last batch of cupcakes, which were created to taste like the Lush 'Abombinaball' bath bomb, the icing was a melty runny sticky disaster. It tasted good, though. I figured a good vehicle for minty vanilla frosting would be plain ol chocolate cupcakes.

I also had a complaint with icing that is half margarine and half shortening, as you will see in an upcoming post about Snickerdoodle cupcakes. I hate the mouthfeel of shortening. But I like the consistency it gives to frosting. So while I was uncompromising with the icing for the Snickerdoodle cupcakes (all margarine, all the time!) for these I decided to go with 3/4 c margarine and 1/4 c shortening. The result is better, though still not perfect. It's definitely a better frosting to work with, that's indisputable, but I can still feel the shortening. Maybe I just need to get over it. Anyhoo, recipe.

From Isa & Terry's VCTOTW

Cupcakes

1 c 'milk'
1 tsp apple cider vinegar 
3/4 c granulated sugar 
1/3 c canola oil 
1 tsp vanilla extract 
1/2 tsp almond extract, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract (I used Chocolate extract)
1 c flour 
1/3 c cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda 
1/2 tsp baking powder 
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F and line your cupcake pan with fun liners.
Mix the milk and vinegar together and set aside to curdle. Beat the sugar and oil together, then add the milk mixture and the extracts and beat until frothy, a couple of minutes. Sift in  the dry ingredients and mix until no lumps remain. 
Divvy up amongst the cups and bake for 18 - 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before putting the cupcakes on a rack to cool the rest of the way.


Frosting (based on vegan fluffy buttercream also from VCTOTW)

3/4 c Eartch Balance, room temp
1/4 c shortening, room temp
3 1/2 c icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp mint extract
1/2 tsp butter flavour
3 tbsp 'milk'


Beat the margarine and shortening together until fluffy. Add about half of the icing sugar and beat until well incorporated. Add a tbsp or two of milk and the rest of the sugar and beat well; add the extracts and beat to combine. If the icing is too stiff, add the rest of the milk. This is a LOT of frosting, so pipe very generous swirls onto the cupcakes.


Three Frosting Designs

Swirly swirls, mountain of frosting, lovely rose

Pictureless Recipe: Panko Coated Chickpea Cutlets and Maple Mustard Sauce

I didn't get any pictures of this meal, but I assure you it was delicious and you want to eat it now.

Meal: panko coated chickpea cutlets with maple mustard sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans and tomato and fennel au gratin.

I've made the chickpea cutlets before but never to great effect. I decided that I would try one last time but instead of frying or baking them immediately, to steam them like one does with vegan sausages and then later coat them in bread crumbs and fry them.

Result? Success! They were definitely a little softer than they probably should have been but I found them much preferable to the other two trials I've made, so I'm pretty happy. The only problem is that I'm a slow prep chef and that combined with adding the steaming onto the cooking made the whole meal take almost 2 hours to make.

The recipes I used for the coating and sauce for the cutlets is from Food & Drink magazine.

Maple Mustard Sauce

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small sweet onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp flour
1 c veg stock
2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp soy sauce
salt & pepper

Saute the onion in the olive oil over medium heat until translucent (5 - 7 minutes). Add the garlic and saute another minute. Add the flour and continue to cook another minute, till there is no more white visible.
Whisk in the stock, mustard, syrup, and soy. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and whisk constantly for another 5 minutes or until thickened. Season to taste with salt and pepper; keep warm till ready to serve.

Panko Coated Chickpea Cutlets

1/2 recipe Doublebatch Chickpea Cutlets

Coating
 1 tbsp maple syrup
3 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt

1 c panko bread crumbs

Mix the syrup through salt together in a wide, shallow bowl and place the bread crumbs in a similar bowl. Coat each cutlet in the syrup mixtures and then coat in breadcrumbs. Pan fry over medium heat in olive oil until brown and crispy, 5 - 8 minutes / side.

Serve with the maple mustard sauce. Yum!