Vegan Coconut & Lime Cupcakes

There are no substitutes for this recipe. Every ingredient has to be exact to keep it vegan. For example, I used Duncan Hines Cream Home-Style frosting in Classic Vanilla because it's on the PETA list of Accidentally Vegan products. Also, I didn't use eggs, milk or butter in this recipe. Just Cream of Coconut and Oil. You'll notice that I don't include sugar. Cream of Coconut is super sweet and you won't need any additional sugar because of it. All these ingredients are easy to find at your local grocery store and this is a simple recipe to make!

Ingredients:

Cupcake:
3 cups of flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp coconut extract (optional)
1 can of cream of coconut
(this is basically coconut water & sugar)
Juice & zest of 2 limes
1/2 cup of light olive oil or canola oil

Frosting:
Duncan Hines Creamy Home-Style Frosting in Classic Vanilla
Juice and zest of 1 lime
1/2 cup of shredded coconut (less or more per taste)

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This makes 12 cupcakes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, add your cream of coconut and lime juice. Mix and let rest.

Mix your dry ingredients together and add the lime zest. Then add your cream of coconut/lime juice mixture, oil and coconut extract. Mix thoroughly until incorporated.

Add batter to 12 cupcake liners in a muffin tin. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Because of the high sugar content, these cupcakes get brown fast so keep an eye on them. Let cool.

In a bowl, add your shredded coconut, frosting, lime juice and zest and mix thoroughly.

Spread frosting onto cooled cupcakes. You can top with a little bit of lime zest and shredded coconut if so desired. Enjoy!

Vegan Almond-Raspberry-Chocolate Cupcakes ~ The Recipe

Ingredients

Egg Replacement:

1/2 cup vanilla soymilk

1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

Dry Ingredients:

1-1/4 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/3 cup of granulated sugar

Wet Ingredients

Egg replacement (see above)

1/4 cup of canola or extra-light olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of almond extract

Filling:

Seedless Raspberry Jam (with Pectin not Gelatin)

Topping:

Duncan Hine's Creamy Homestyle Frosting - Classic Chocolate

*make sure you read the label carefully so that the frosting you chose does NOT have milk products.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a cup, measure out 1/2 cup of soymilk and add 1/2 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Stir and set aside for about 8-10 minutes. The soymilk will curdle a bit and this will act like the binding agent in the batter.

Mix dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar.

Mix wet ingredients into the dry. Oil, egg replacement and almond extract.

Line your cupcake tin with 8 cupcake liners. This is where it gets tricky. You need to make sure you distribute everything evenly otherwise you'll get a wonky cupcake or only 7. Using half the batter, fill in the 8 cupcake liners evenly. Then add a very small spoonful of raspberry jam to the top of each. Then evenly distribute the batter to all the cupcakes, covering the jam thoroughly.

Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Let cool. Then frost with room-temperature frosting. Cold frosting will break apart those lovely soft cupcakes.

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It took me a lot of experimentation to get this recipe just right so that the jam wouldn't sink to the bottom. It's easily double and tripled and quadrupled so don't feel like you have to only make 8 cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Vegan Almond-Raspberry-Chocolate Cupcakes ~ The Story Behind the Recipe

I thought it would be good idea to provide some background on the creation of this dessert before I give you the actual recipe. In the first of this two-part post, I will give you a bit of the history behind the dessert. It's a good way to build up anticipation for when I post the real recipe.

Some months ago, I found myself drooling over Smitten Kitchen's recipe for Almond Raspberry Layer Cake. If you are familiar with Smitten Kitchen, you know that it is written by an expert baker who happens to have some serious photography skills. I spent a good twenty minutes just salivating over the images of this cake. I really wanted to make it  but a few things were going against me though. First of all, I don't own any cake pans. Second of all, I'm horrible at any baking that requires delicacy or precision. Third of all, I have no way of transporting a cake to potential guinea pigs, thus forcing myself to eat the whole thing myself or to throw most of it away. So after evaluating my various obstacles, I decided to make this a cupcake instead because 1) cupcakes are easy 2) I have muffin/cupcake tins 3) I have tupperware suitable for transporting said cupcakes.

Turning the cake into a cupcake was challenge enough, but I wanted to do something to make them extra special, extra unique; in other words, I wanted to make this recipe mine. After reading the excellent vegan blog Strawberry Hedgehog, I had started making vegan cupcakes. At first I just made chocolate-hazelnut cupcakes with Ghiradelli's Chocolate Hazelnut hot cocoa mix (which is vegan friendly). Then I made vanilla vegan cupcakes with strawberry filling, which were only partially vegan because the strawberry jam had gelatin instead of vegan-friendly pectin. To replace the eggs in the cupcakes, I use the curdled soymilk method and to which there is a formula.

2 eggs = 1/2 cup of vanilla soymilk + 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinger

When I made my first batch of vegan cupcakes, they were so incredibly light and moist and delicious that I stopped making non-vegan cupcakes altogether.

So why did I make vegan cupcakes to begin with? My friend Gina went vegan a couple of years ago after years of being just vegetarian. Whenever there was a function in which friends were bringing food, I tried to bring some vegan-friendly dessert so that Gina wouldn't be left out (who likes to be left out? I know I don't!). This past Fourth of July, Gina threw a potluck party at her place and I thought that the event would be a good opportunity to debut the Vegan Almond-Raspberry-Chocolate cupcakes. If anything, there would be lots of willing guinea pigs to try out the dessert.

I had to make sure that the three main elements in this dessert were all vegan friendly. I like to use PETA's listing of "accidentally vegan" products because they list brand names and they have a baking section! It's not surprising that a lot of products on the market are accidentally vegan because I'm sure company's cut costs by taking out animal products which I'm sure are more expensive than vegetable-based products. I was worried about the chocolate frosting for the cupcakes, but luckily Duncan Hines Creamy Home-Style Frosting in Chocolate was on the list! Almond Extract would be no problem since it's also vegan friendly. It was difficult to find seedless Raspberry jam without gelatin in the regular grocery store but my favorite high-end produce market Wilson Farms carried their own brand of pectin raspberry jam! So once I had all the main elements together, I was in business!

Next up: The Recipe!