However, I really was pumped up for my cooking videos. And I had no recorder. So...I decided to channel all that excitement into finally starting a cooking blog! With lots of praise coming from hubby, Kim, Renuka, Amit, and Himlata, I'm ready!
My first entry is on the vegan cupcakes I invented last month. I was bored, and I had an immense craving for cupcakes, but being vegetarian, I couldn't find any eggless recipes that included items I actually had at home. To top that off, I had also just run out of milk. What's a veggie girl to do?
I headed over to the kitchen and proceeded to walk back and forth between every ingredient I had on every shelf in the kitchen, while taking five minute contemplation rest stops at each point. I thought of every vegetarian idea I had ever had, as well as dishes I had actually made, and especially, baked. Somehow, I came up with an idea and started zipping through the kitchen to grab a bowl, some spoons, a fork, and the ingredients I had miraculously thought to put to together.
HOW I MADE IT
This will be my "how I made it" section, because I don't really think there's any 'method' to what I do most of the time. So:
In my bowl, I put in about 1 1/3 cups of flour, a teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda, 1 cup and an extra sprinkle of sugar, a dash of cinnamon, about two tablespoons of whole wheat bran, and a small pinch of salt because a lot of other recipes say so. I mixed it all together to get the ingredients as evenly distributed as possible. I made a well in the center and added about a half cup of oil, a tablespoon of vinegar, a drop of vanilla essence, and some lukewarm water and began folding the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients with a fork. As soon as the water had mixed in with some of the dry mixture, I kept adding water before it got doughy, and ended up with something that looked like a regular cake batter :)
I don't have a cupcake tray, but I did have paper cupcake holders, so I lined about twenty-something of them on a flat rectangular tray, and began filling them as the oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I quickly realized I had to fill each holder only up to about half-way (because the first few started leaking out resulting in me removing everything from the tray, cleaning it all up, and replacing all cupcake holders as well as the sloppy first few, then diminishing my excitement tremendously as I pretended to be patient with the rest).
Once I was done, I put them in the oven for about 30 minutes or so. However, our oven is not the most youthful one out there, so I started checking from 20 minutes. To be safe, once you reach a 15-20 minute mark and the top looks firm, start checking with a toothpick. My toothpick came out clean around the 30 minute mark in an oven that is famous for taking longer than usual to bake.
While my cupcakes were cooling, I took out a container of white icing from the fridge I had previously made for my last eggless cake (most icings can last up to two weeks in an airtight container - my version actually lasts more). As it had been in the fridge, it was quite firm, so I finished cleaning up and had a cup of herbal tea while I waited for it to regain a usable consistency.
I took a portion of the icing and put it in a small bowl, adding about two tablespoons of cocoa powder, a dash of sugar, and mixed until I felt it was the right consistency. I now had two colors of icing because while I was having the tea, I came up with the brilliant idea of doing a yin-yang theme using chocolate and vanilla!
So my cupcakes had cooled, and I took the most lopsided one to get an idea of how exactly this concoction tasted = brilliant! It had a unique taste, and as I regularly have problems with low blood sugar, I found it notably sweet for my taste, but it was otherwise absolutely scrumptious!
I added a drop of lemon essence to my white frosting to challenge the taste of the sweeter chocolate one, and to give the cupcake itself a flavor of both frostings mingled. We had a knife with a blade bent at a 90 degree angle (hubby never remembers why and I don't think I want to know) that was perfect for use as a frosting spatula, and so I began frosting.
The design was fairly simple, the only difficulty was applying my very humbled art skills to actually give it the prominent curve of the yin-yang design. I pushed in a white sprinkle to the biggest curve of the chocolate frosting to represent the white dot, and a dot of cocoa powder on the opposite end of the white frosting for the darker dot. For the most misshapen ones, I tried to detract from the deformed design and attract to the overall pretty by throwing a bunch of sprinkles on it, simply put.
REVIEWS
My husband, the biggest carnivore I know, and biggest veggie critic that exists, actually loved these! He couldn't stop praising them, and continuously snuck off to secretly have more (adding to his unhealthy diet that he has no concern about). My compensation was knowing that he actually loved vegan cupcakes, and was not in any state of delirium or madness when so stated (repeatedly), and also, as much as he hates having anything to do with whole wheat, I made sure some bran was there in every bite (which he will find out when he reads this), which was probably the biggest reason why I was so shocked at his approval and apparent delight.
Kim, my adopted sister, and her family absolutely loved these! I returned a few hours after dropping a kit of cupcakes off and they were already done! I was then interrogated somewhat lovingly by Kim, her sister, and mom, for my super secret (that is now no longer secret) recipe and giggled with glee as they approvingly noted down each ingredient and then proceeded to [successfully] bribe me with huge bear hugs in return.
As stated above, I found the cupcakes notably sweet, but thoroughly enjoyed them. The tangy lemon flavored white frosting blended nicely with the sweeter chocolate frosting, prevented it from being too sweet with frosting, and totally enhanced the flavor of the cupcakes. I only had one at a time, and the most I had at once was two. It was even better with a cup of hot green tea. I have drawn the conclusion that this invention was indeed successful. ^_^
