vegan birthday cupcakes

Sunday was my good friend Kristen's birthday and I figured I'd bring along a sweet, vegan treat to our Monday night bowling league to help celebrate. After all, it's always best to keep the birthday flame alive!

Normally, when I make cupcakes for vegan friends, I make the 6 minute chocolate cake recipe from the Moosewood Cooks at Home cookbook (also known as "wacky cake"). I love it, it's easy to make BUT I feel that it's almost worn it's welcome. I needed a break from the familiar so I decided to try something new. The problem with many vegan cakes and baked goods is that they tend to be heavy and dry...however the addition of vinegar somehow creates a surprising moistness and lightness. These cupcakes are beyond light with a nice crisp top! So moist and so tasty that I put them on par with one of my favorite coconut cupcake recipes from Ina Garten -- with way less fat. A total keeper.

vegan coconut cupcakes
1 1/2 c ap flour
1 c white sugar
1/2 c flaked coconut
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 cup coconut milk
1/3 c canola oil
1 t vanilla extract
1 t white vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, coconut, baking soda, and salt. Add in the rest of the ingredients, adding the vinegar last. Stir until well combined.

2. Pour into cupcake liners and bake 30 minutes or until centers come clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

3. Frost with your favorite vegan buttercream frosting. Decorate with freshly toasted coconut.

vegan buttercream frosting
Not much of a recipe here, just some basic guidelines.

I sifted some icing sugar into a bowl and added some vegan margarine (like Earth Balance) and mixed until smooth. To get a creamier consistency, I added a couple of tablespoons of coconut milk. I then split the icing up into 2 bowls. Into one, I added a teaspoon of vanilla and into the other, I sifted a large amount of cocoa powder and mixed well with a bit more coconut milk. Tasted to make sure you've got the right amount of sweetness and flavour. That's it!

whole lotta love

Funny how most boys can play Led Zeppelin on demand. I took an afternoon nap today because I'm feeling a bit under the weather and when I woke up, I had a strange need to hear some Zep. I told Cornelius: I'm going to make some icing for these cupcakes and I want to hear that song that goes "I come from the land of the ice and snow...", you know the one. Yes, he did and he was able to have it up on his itunes in seconds. Boys can be quite reliable that way.

pumpkin cupcakes
I'm having friends over for some pumpkin carving and I figured I'd make some seasonal treats, which means, more damn pumpkin! I don't think my friends will mind. These cupcakes turned out incredibly moist and delicious. I wanted to decorate them all scary like, but as I was feeling under the weather, I didn't want to head out and search for gummy worms, black shoelace licorice, candy corn or gummy teeth. So these are just pretty orange perfection.

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/2 c butter, softened
1 1/3 c sugar
2 eggs
1 c mashed cooked or canned pumpkin
3/4 c milk
3/4 c chopped walnuts

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg into a bowl. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in eggs. Blend in mashed pumpkin. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk, blending until batter is smooth; stir in chopped walnuts. Spoon batter into paper-lined muffin pan cups.Fill about 2/3 full. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Frost with cream cheese frosting, whipped cream, or leave plain. Makes about 24 cupcakes.

wedding + honeymoon = tasty!

On June 25, C and I decided to tie the knot and get hitched up all legal-like. Getting prepared for the wedding was actually quite fun and all the design, crafting and baking were definite stress relivers. Half of the wedding food was catered from a local catering company as well as a few items from, costco (cheese!), a sushi restaurant (sushi!) and a vietnamese restaurant (chicken wings!). The rest of it was made by me and some dedicated friends. It turned out wonderfully and there was enough food to feed the hungry and then some. I enlisted my good friend kyla to also help with the cakes as well as my mother in law who harnessed all her church ladies into baking up a storm for us. Not to be outdone, I too made cupcakes and a cake as well.



I designed our wedding programs to look like a recipe card. the front half had all the necessary program information, like who was oficiating the ceremony & what song we walked down the aisle to (Marvin Gaye's "You're All I Need to Get By"). The other side, contained our wedding cupcake recipe which is Ina Garten's Coconut recipe found here. Enjoy, we did!

Our honeymoon was a road trip through several states and we made sure that we ate good food (nearly) everywhere we went. Highlights included:

• The Farm Cafe in Portland, OR. Our good friends treated us here on our first night. The food was fresh and the room was beautiful. Thanks Kyla & Sergio!


• Eating fresh crab on Fisherman's Warf in San Francisco.


• Burritos at Pancho Villa, in the Mission (S.F.)


• The best burger ever at the Cow Palace in Amato, AZ. It's located across from the Longhorn Grill, which admittedly did look appealing from the outside, but inside it looked like a country cupboard. I'm glad we ate across the street. Good lemonade too!


• In n' Out burger. I finally went and it was worth the wait!


• Los Cuates in Albuquerque, NM. Amazing sopas.


• Our Trader Joe's tuna curry boil-in-bag that we cooked on our propane burner while camping. Delicious! Trader Joe's is a campers heaven.


• Raspberry pancakes at a cafe in Hillsboro, NM.


• Iced coffees and a blackberry coffee cake at Macy's Cafe in Flagstaff, AZ


• The Moab Lime beer at Eddie McStiff's Brew Pub in Moab, UT. Their pizza was pretty good too.


• The steak sandwich and $1 microbrews after midnight at the Main Street Station Brew Pub in Vegas.

Damn, why did we come back to Vancouver again? Oh yeah, REAL LIFE. Sigh.

happy birthday to me!