Although I've learned a bit more about vegan baking over the years, I still don't have that much experience with it. I'm happy enough to replace eggs with flax "eggs" in pancake and muffin batters. And milk is usually easy enough to replace since there are now a plethora of non-dairy milks easily available at the grocery store. Sugar is fine as long as you're careful about how it's processed. And butter can usually be swapped out with some other fat, although you may have to make some adjustments to compensate for lost flavour and water content. But, despite knowing a lot of the theory of how to "veganize" a recipe, I haven't had much occasion to actually do it. So I was happy to have a well-tested vegan cupcake available when I wanted to send some goodies into the Kidlet's class for their Hallowe'en celebration.

I was really happy with how these cupcakes turned out! They were pleasingly chocolate-y and they rose very well. TF felt that they had a very slightly "off" flavour, but I couldn't detect it.

All that being said, they were a bit annoying to make. Aside from requiring the use of three separate bowls and needing to make an aquafaba-based whipped egg white analogue, I just found the batter very loose and runny and difficult to work with. It had the consistency of heavy cream and was basically impossible to scoop with a spoon the way I normally do for cupcakes. I ended up making a huge mess trying. I think I'll just decant the batter into a large measuring cup and pour it into the liners next time!

I was worried that the fact that it was so loose meant that something had gone wrong. But the cupcakes still seem to have baked up fine. Whether this was because that's how it was supposed to be or that I just got lucky and they worked out in spite of the extremely thin batter, I'm not sure. But either way, I got some great cupcakes out of it!

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

Slightly adapted from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

• 190g all-purpose flour
• 1 c. organic sugar
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 c. water
• 1/2 c. Dutched (alkalized) cocoa powder
• 30g dark chocolate¹
• 1/4 c. coconut oil
• 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 c. aquafaba
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• Vegan Chocolate Frosting

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F) and line a muffin tin with papers.
2. Combine flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Sift in baking powder and baking soda.
4. In a separate bowl, combine water, cocoa powder, chocolate, coconut oil, and vanilla.
5. Heat, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool.
6. Add cream of tartar to aquafaba and beat until stiff peaks form (3-9 minutes on high speed).
7. Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine.
8. Add ~1/3 of the whipped aquafaba and stir it in to loosen the batter.
9. Add the remaining aquafaba and gently fold it in until just combined.
10. Pour the mixture into the prepared muffin tin.
11. Bake at 200°C (400°F) for 15-20 minutes.
12. Let cupcakes cool in tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to finish cooling.
13. Ice with chocolate frosting, decorate as desired, and serve².

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¹ Double-check to ensure that your chocolate is vegan and doesn't contain any milk ingredients. ^Back
2 ATK notes that these cupcakes are best served the same day they're made. Personally, I think they're still delicious even two or three days later, so I wouldn't worry over-much about making them ahead. I think the quality of the icing suffers a bit after the first couple days, but they're still pretty tasty even so. ^Back