Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

My sister called me up one day this summer and said she needed help making cupcakes for her friend’s bridal shower. I am the master cupcake baker in the family so I said I would help. Then she told me she wanted to make vegan cupcakes. Vegan cupcake baker? Not so much. I really had no idea what went into vegan baking since you can’t use butter or eggs. So I did some searching and found Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World on Amazon.

When the book arrived I flipped through it  and found the recipes surprisingly tempting. Margarita cupcakes? Hell yes! There is definitely tequila in them! There were lots of other delicious looking recipes in there as well like Chai Latte and Chocolate Stout cupcakes.

Mucho Margarita Cupcakes

This book is suitable for both veteran and rookie cupcake bakers. The first section of the book focuses on ingredients and equipment, as well as troubleshooting and decorating.  If you’ve baked before and are happy just following the recipes you can skip this section and go right to the recipes.  I found the ingredient section was great for getting and idea of what goes into a vegan cupcake.

There are 38 cupcake recipes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and 14 icing recipes.  The cupcakes are broken down into sections of Basic, Classic and Fancy. You can mix and match them or use the combinations given in the book. I also liked that the authors included some variations for their recipes.

One thing this book gets right is having photos for each recipe.  This is key to any good cookbook, and yet lacking in so many.

My sister and I decided to make the Mucho Margarita cupcakes and Basic Chocolate cupcakes with Chocolate Mousse topping, since the bride-to-be is a big chocolate lover. Most of the recipes are for a dozen cupcakes so we made one batch of each. I like to have a lot of frosting to work with, so we doubled the icing recipe for the margarita cupcakes.

In general you use canola oil as a replacement for butter/oils in the batter and margarine to replace the butter in the icings.  Canola oil has a distinctive scent that you could smell in the cupcakes, so if I made them again I might replace it with vegetable oil.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Vegan Chocolate Mousse Topping

Making the chocolate mousse was so easy. The hardest part was melting the chocolate – or keeping an eye on it so I didn’t ruin it. Then you throw everything in a blender and give it a whirl. There’s tofu in it but you’d never even guess that it was vegan at all.

This may not be my go-to book for everyday cupcake baking, but I will definitely be making cupcakes in this book again.  Even when I’m not baking vegan,  I can foresee using the recipes in this book for inspiration.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule is available for $10.85 on Amazon.com.