Experimental Cupcakes

Lisa recommended the Chocolate-Covered-Katie website to me claiming that she had made some questionable sounding desert and it tasted wonderful. To satisfy my curiosity, I visited the site. I ended up finding this recipe. This recipe appeals to me for numerous reasons:

1. I like cupcakes.
2. I enjoy spending my free time reading recipes I find online.
3. I am a single lady.
4. While generally I turn up my nose at anything vegan (because I have had some less than pleasant encounters with vegans trying to make me become vegan), vegan recipes are starting to become more appealing. I don't keep eggs in the house generally because I don't eat eggs by themselves. If I buy a half dozen eggs, use three to bake a cake, then I still have three left over. And I eat cake twice a day for a week.*

So I tried the recipe, substituting caramel flavored coffee creamer for the 1T plus 1 tsp non-dairy milk or water. Therefore, my cupcakes were not vegan.The cupcake turned out pretty good, and I ended up eating it hot right out of the oven.

Tonight I was invited over to a friend's house for dinner. She was making pasta salad and fancy-schmancy chicken brats from Trader Joe's, and I decided to bring dessert. I went back to this recipe and doubled it to make two cupcakes. This time instead of using coffee creamer for the extra liquid, I used straight up coffee. Then, so I wouldn't have white frosting on white cupcakes, I decided to make the cupcakes blue. Of course they turned out more green, but that's ok.

Cupcakes right out of the oven

They look kind of lonely all alone in the middle of that big pan.

 Because I don't have toothpicks, I had to stab one with my sharpest 

knife to determine whether or not it was done. See the stab mark? 

The frosting I improvised from powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, and a little bit of the flavored coffee creamer again. This means my cupcakes were still not vegan, so I could not feed them to any vegan friends. That was fine, however, because neither Ashley nor I are vegan.

Orange is my favorite color, so I decided to make the frosting orange. It turned out a bit runnier than I would have liked, so I probably should have used less butter and more powdered sugar, but that is alright. I could have fixed it, but then there would have been left over frosting.

 Orange Frosting

 Orange frosting and the dye used to accomplish the 

desired level of orangeness 

Here is what the final product looked like:

 Frosted cupcakes

 In orange pan for transport 

They turned out tasting alright, if not a little over-cooked. Also, you couldn't taste the coffee at all. Maybe next time I will add a little more coffee. This will not only hopefully enhance the flavor a bit, but maybe make the cupcakes a little more moist. Also, I will probably not try to dye the cupcakes blue. The final shade of green on the inside of the baked cupcakes was reminiscent of moldy bread, which was not exactly what I was going for.

Still, not bad. Next time I'll have to concoct some sort of decor for the top or just add sprinkles.

*This is not a bad thing, really. I maintain that cake makes a wonderful breakfast, though not as good as ice cream.

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