Test Kitchen: Vegan Cupcakes

An invite to a weekend dinner party and all the recent press about vegan chef Chloe Coscarelli's cupcake challenge win on the Food Network inspired me to (try to) make two of Chloe's winning cupcake recipes for the dinner party. The recipes for the raspberry tiramisu cupcake and the chocolate strawberry shortcake cupcake are available on her blog here and here.

My attempts were definitely only partial successes, at best. They tasted good (not great), but what really set them apart, compared to the beautiful idealized versions on Chloe's blog, was that they were entirely lacking in the looks department. I'm guessing that something when wrong with the frosting because my versions came out resembling something closer to Cinnabon icing than buttercream frosting -- all drippy and tooth-numbingly sweet, without any of the fluffy volume I had hoped for. Admittedly, probably compounding the drippy-frosting-problem was the 45-minute drive in a sun-baked car that the cupcakes had to endure to get to the dinner party -- by the time we ate them, they were mostly just gooey, sweet blobs.

I'm not sure I would use either of these cupcake recipes again, at least not in their entirety. The base recipes for the plain vanilla and chocolate/espresso cupcakes are fine, but neither wowed me enough to prevent me from wanting to try out other recipes. And it goes without saying that I am still in search for a better frosting recipe. But on the plus side, I will undoubtedly find a way to incorporate the amazing raspberry sauce (from the raspberry tiramisu cupcake recipe) in other dishes (layered into soy yogurt parfaits, drizzled over vanilla soy ice cream, or as a topping for vegan waffles and pancakes!). It was hands-down the best aspect of either of the two cupcakes (though sadly, the raspberry sauce got completely lost among the other competing flavors in the tiramisu cupcake).

The chocolate cupcakes straight out of the oven.

A slightly closer look.

Chocolate strawberry shortcake cupcakes, mid-assembly.

Decidedly more homely than the gorgeous masterpieces that won on Cupcake Wars.

Test Kitchen: Vegan Wheat Bread

So, I may or may not have gotten a mild case of food poisoning from a little hole-in-the-wall Tunisian restaurant last night, but what I do know is that the only kind of food I've been willing to stomach since the fateful Tunisian dinner is bread. This is actually a good thing because last weekend I tried my hand at baking my first ever loaf of bread -- a whole wheat vegan concoction I found on the Internet -- and am now awash with more bread than I know what to do with. (In retrospect, I probably should have read the comments below the recipe before trying it out because I would have been forewarned that the recipe would result in the world's largest loaf of bread in the history of bread making.)

It looks reasonable-sized here, but, really, it's not.

Yeast gone wild?

The volume of bread the recipe produced notwithstanding, the bread itself is quite tasty in a bland, healthy-vegan sort of way. This is perfect for my current stomach condition, but might warrant at least a little recipe tinkering in the future. For starters, cutting the recipe in half and/or reducing the amount of yeast. Then, subbing out the no-sugar-added soy milk I used (my own fault) for regular soy milk. And adding some sugar or agave nectar, in lieu of or in addition to the bitter molasses.

Veganism Takes the (Cup)Cake

Ok, so I'm not quite ready just yet to fully embrace veganism in its entirety, but this New York Times blog post -- about a vegan chef, Chloe Coscarelli, winning a cupcake baking contest on the Food Network's TV show Cupcake Wars -- offers some additional motivation. The blog post notes that veganism has become an increasingly popular dietary preference in recent years, with various celebrities helping to endorse healthy eating habits and animal-friendly lifestyles. But what makes this recent vegan coup extra special is that it proves that vegan food has the potential to actually taste good -- better, in fact, than non-vegan food. And not just vegan food, but vegan baking, often considered the not-so-tasty Achilles heel of a vegan diet. Even when pitted against three non-vegan bakers who had the advantage of being able to use non-vegan baking ingredient staples, including eggs, cream, and butter, Coscarelli's creations managed to impress the Food Network cupcake judges the most. (Two of her winning cupcake recipes are available on Coscarelli's blog, here and here.) One of the judges, Candace Nelson, explains in the NYTimes blog post:

“Of all the shows we’ve done, the thing I hear the most is, ‘Were those vegan cupcakes really that good?’ ” Ms. Nelson said. “People are in sort of disbelief that this vegan chef beat out the rest of the competition. My answer is yes, they were delicious. It was everything we were looking for in a cupcake.”

Today I did buy my first box of Ener-G's Egg Replacer and my first tub of Earth Balance's buttery spread - two key ingredients for vegan baking. Am looking forward to trying these products out and experimenting with some vegan baked goods very, very soon!