Natural Red Velvet Cupcakes made with Beets

Natural Red Velvet Cupcakes | alimentageuse.com - Naturally made, vegan with no artificial food colouring!  #cupcakes #vegan #beets

It’s been about a year and a half since I posted my favourite red velvet cake recipe on Je suis alimentageuse. Since I’ve found that recipe, I use it for my cake pops and truffles not only in red, but also in purple. It is the most well received cake recipe that I have, being both subtle in flavour, as well as a light, fluffy cake that works amazingly with the cream cheese icing. But ever since I discovered the “evils” of food colouring, I have been hesitant to use food colouring ever since. Of course, every now and then, I succumb to the needs of having brightly coloured food, but I wanted to find a recipe for natural red velvet cupcakes made with beets, which surprisingly, was really hard for me to do.

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Vegan Green Tea Cupcakes

Green Tea #Cupcakes, inspired by Starbucks' #Green #Tea #Frappucino | alimentageuse.com #desserts Before I get into these vegan green tea cupcakes, I want to talk about my fitness progress. A few posts ago, I talked about my body image issues and my struggle with my self-esteem. In that post I kind of mentioned that I would be implementing some sort of a fitness plan for myself to improve my health, body, and self-esteem. I can definitely say that I’ve been keeping up with my regiment.

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Coconut Brûlée Cupcakes

#Coconut Brulée #Cupcakes from alimentageuse.com. The fluffiest #vegan cupcakes ever!

So before I get into these delicious and VEGAN coconut cupcakes, I want to reward you lovely readers with a chance to win a $250 Gift Card from Amazon! I’ve always been really upset that most giveaways (like stand mixers or other kitchen appliances) are only U.S. residents only, because not only could I not participate, but my fellow Canadians would not be allowed to participate. So I’m so excited to share this giveaway hosted by Lisa at Wine and Glue!

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It’s Lisa’s (not mine) birthday, and to celebrate, she’s organized an awesome giveaway to Amazon.com. You probably can deduce that as a food blogger, I have a little bit of an obsession with my kitchen. And kitchen appliances. Let’s list all the appliances that I have, and I am willing to bet almost all were ordered from Amazon.ca.

  1. KitchenAid Stand Mixer
  2. Cuisinart Immersion Blender (plus the one for Chis and my Mom)
  3. Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker (2 Qts)
  4. Cuisinart Food Processor
  5. Cuisinart Mini Food Processor (This was before I got my food processor)
  6. CrockPot Slow Cooker
  7. George Foreman Grill (Oh! This was from Walmart)
  8. Waffle Maker (To be fair, I think my mom won this from Zellers with HBC points when that was still a thing. Like 10 years ago)
  9. Black & Decker hand mixer (this was before my stand mixer)
  10. Rice Cooker (Sanyo, and from Chinatown. But let’s be real, I’m asian. Gotta go to Chinatown for that)
  11. Magic Bullet (I think this was ordered from the TV when it first came out)

So that’s it for kitchen appliances. And 8/11 were ordered from Amazon, the other three were taken when I moved from home so to be fair, I didn’t order these myself.

But I have a MASSIVE list of things that I’ve ordered from Amazon that are not appliances…in the categories of kitchen tools (spatulas, ice cream scoops, cookie scoops, baking pans, icing tips, etc.), books (SO MANY BOOKS), a cake stand, memory cards, the list goes on.

I really like online shopping, okay?

So if you are anything like me, you will LOVE this giveaway. What can you do with $250? Uh. Buy your own KitchenAid Stand mixer in almost any colour imaginable? Mine’s chrome because all the empire red ones were sold out and it was RIDICULOUSLY great deal and macaron week was impending and I didn’t want to whip 7 batches of meringue by hand. But you could also buy tons of books. Kindle books. Electronics. ANYTHING.

I freaking -LOVE- Amazon. And my friends here do too:

Go check em out. Enter the Rafflecopter below to enter the giveaway!

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Okay now that that’s done, let’s move on to these cupcakes.

I actually kind of messed these up. These were the winners of the cupcake category for the Vegan Bake-Off in which I participated back in February (Runner-Up for Donuts and Pastries category with my Vegan Lemon Donuts). I had these cupcakes and they blew my mind!

They were fluffy. Chewy. Sticky. Coconutty. AND VEGAN.

What’s not to love?

So when the Toronto Vegetarian Association released a PDF of the cookbook of some recipes from the bake off to TVA members and participants, I KNEW I had to make myself a batch.

I think I messed up because I should have made it in an 8×8 pan. That way I would have avoided the hassle of individually icing each cupcake, then broiling, then prying the cupcakes out of the pan. Totally delicious either way. But man. These. Are. Delicious.

The top layer is broiled and it literally takes the cake to a whole new level. The cake itself is so great and fluffy, and the top layer has some chewy, crunchy coconut shreds and GAW. It’s amazing. The Antique Appetite is a genius and deserved to win that category 100%. and the flax meal makes me feel like I’m helping my digestive system even though I’m eating a fist-full of sugar. But that fact that these cupcakes are vegan also make me feel happy about my life choices.

Give these a try. You will not regret it.

#Coconut Brulée #Cupcakes from alimentageuse.com. The fluffiest #vegan cupcakes ever!

Coconut Brûlée Cupcakes

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Yield: 12 cupcakes or 24 mini cupcakes

Ingredients

  • - 2 tbsp flax meal + 5 tbsp warm water (or other egg replacer for 2 eggs)
  • - 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • - 1/2 cup almond milk
  • - 3/4 white sugar
  • - 1 cup flour
  • - 1 tsp baking powder
  • - 1/2 tsp salt
  • - [For the top layer)
  • - 3 tbsp Earth Balance
  • - 5 tbsp brown sugar
  • - 2 tbsp almond milk
  • - 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Instructions

  1. Mix together flax meal and warm water and let sit for 2-3 minutes until it has thickened.
  2. Add the coconut oil, almond milk, and sugar. Mix until incorporated.
  3. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt.
  4. Preheat oven to 350F.
  5. Divide the batter among lined cupcake pans (either 24 mini-cupcakes or 12 regular sized cupcakes).
  6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean when poked in the middle. You can also bake this in an 8x8 square pan (just make sure to grease and flour the pan)
  7. While it's baking, prepare the top layer by beating the Earth Balance and brown sugar together until incorporated.
  8. Add almond milk and coconut and beat until fluffy. Spread over the cupcakes/cake and broil until the coconut is golden and the top is bubbling.
  9. Remove from oven, let cool on a wire rack (if you made them into cupcakes, remove and make sure you put some paper towel under them because it'll get a little oily.

Notes

Recipe adapted from The Antique Appetite

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Dark Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes

Dark Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes

I can now safely say that I know enough movie production jargon to survive on a set, because I just finished a weekend of cooking for my friend’s student film, Gertie the Great! Gertie, an 83 year old woman, rebels against a society that constantly infantilizes her the only way she knows how – by turning to a life of crime. It’s an awesome story and the lady who plays Gertie is so awesome, there’s one point in the film where’s she’s sitting in a lazyboy just rocking out to some rap music. Unfortunately, this song is solely financed by  the four students who are making it and really need your help financially to make this movie. If you could even spare a dollar or two, just a bit goes a long way. If you can help out, please click on this link! You could get your name in the credits =)

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Banana Chocolate Cupcakes with Banana Cream Cheese Icing

Banana Chocolate Cupcakes

For those still in the academic style de vie, it’s exam season! Or final paper season. Most of my friends are still in school, so I’m sending happy vibes of hope and optimism because exam season always looks bleak and terrifying in the beginning. I know the feeling. I finished one out of my two final papers for the semester, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  I’ll do what I do best and distract you from the end of year/semester stress and titillate your visual senses with these amazing cupcakes. I had some leftover bananas and I wanted to find a new recipe to use up three overripe bananas, and I think I found one! This ain’t some plain jane banana bread, these banana cupcakes are light, fluffy, and dreaaaamy.

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Tiramisú Cupcakes

Tiramisu Cupcakes

Sometimes, I make things because I have the ingredients. Other times, I need to make them for an event. Today, was a combination of both, but mostly I made these just because I wanted to photograph them. These cupcakes were perfectly moist, fluffy and light. Soaked in a little bit of coffee liqueur syrup and topped with the most amazingly delicate marscapone frosting, these cupcakes honestly just made me stop and appreciate life. It was really that monumental. Italians knew their stuff.

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Vanilla Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Vanilla Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I’m on a salted caramel kick right now. It’s a pretty trendy flavour as it is but it is for a good reason. It’s delicious. I’ve also been looking for a great vanilla cupcake recipe for the longest time, and I think I found it! It’s perfectly light, rises beautifully, and has that perfect little crispy top that is great with swiss meringue buttercream. Yum.

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Banana Cupcakes with Honey-Cinnamon Frosting

 One thing I like to know about people is how they like bananas. My mom likes them when they’re kind of on the brink of being green, Chris likes them when they’re PERFECTLY yellow, my other friend likes them lightly ripe and I have another friend who likes them as ripe as possible. I personally like them in between green and yellow. I prefer perfectly yellow, but they’re delicious if their edges are tinged green too. My point is, I bought a bunch of bananas and forgot about them–so naturally I had to bake something.

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Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes

In the past, I’ve always said that fall is my favourite season. However, after having experienced the transition from warm summer to chilly fall, I think I like winter much more. I’m more prepared for cold in the winter than I am for fall. Fall catches me off guard sometimes (e.g. yesterday when I wore a knee-length pencil skirt to work, which was fine; then I froze my butt walking home in the chilly rain, which was not so fine.) One thing about fall that is better than winter though, is the fall flavours. All of the pumpkin spice, the cinnamon, the first taste of delicious hot chocolate that warms you from the inside and seems to spread the warmth down to your toes… I love fall-tasting things.

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Lemon Cupcakes

I’m pretty sure you folks are well aware that I love lemons a lot. The crisp, sweet taste just makes everything better. I baked these cupcakes for one of Chris’ cousin’s weddings because I didn’t know what else to give them other than a bottle of wine. And I really like piping?

So the instructions for this recipe weren’t really that logical, so I’ve altered some of the steps to make for a better batter and stuff.

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