Joyful Joyful Soys

“We used to roast Stay-Puffed Marshmallows. By the fire at Camp Lokanda.” – Ghostbusters

When I brought up the idea of Vegan baking to my cast mates in the dressing room a few weeks ago, I thought the men in the cast were actually going to faint. And I understand their feelings in a way. I mean, baking is a celebration of all things dairy, so how can you take that away and be left with anything worth indulging in? (I also think that some men think of vegan baking as being the same as watching The Notebook and The Vow back-to-back and then going to see an Indigo Girls concert) So I searched through all of my books to find a recipe that would prove to them that even without the eggs and the milk, a dessert can still be absolutely incredible and totally brilliant.

Luckily, I didn’t have to look very far for a recipe to riff on since I am the proud owner of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World* by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (the incredible mind behind Veganomicon, basically the Vegan Cook Bible) and Terry Hope Romero.  The book is filled with over 60 awesome-looking, innovative recipes, but I was immediately drawn to their S’mores Cupcake. I happen to love S’mores because they remind me of summer camp. Thus, today’s quote; I chose it because I actually went to Camp Lokanda, and every year they would play that clip from the movie Ghostbusters before we watched the video yearbook. In fact, here is a picture of me wearing a Camp Lokanda t-shirt circa 1998 (I was 10-years-old)

Once I had made my cupcake decision I went out in search of the ingredients. I had to go to Whole Foods (obviously) but it was amazing to see all of the various types of vegan chocolate and soy yogurts and vegetable shortening and all that, because I’m generally used to just grabbing a Hershey’s bar and being done with it. It almost made my baking feel healthy…which is probably a pretty dangerous sensation to have for someone like me…

Anyway, whether you’re perfectly content to have dessert only once in a blue moon, or whether you’re able to justify every sweet under the sun because dark chocolate is a mono-unsaturated fat or there was a fruit listed in the ingredients, here is the recipe for:

VEGAN S’MORES CUPCAKES WITH FLUFFY VEGAN BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: (and I will be listening to the Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks for the entirety of my baking)

INGREDIENTS

For the Cupcakes:

-       ¾ cup of brown sugar (I used light brown sugar)

-       ½ cup canola oil

-       2 tablespoons molasses

-       ¼ cup soy yogurt

-       1 ¼ cup soy milk

-       1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-       1 cup all-purpose flour (I used organic and unbleached because, you know, if you’re going vegan, you might as well going organic, too)

-       1 teaspoon baking powder

-       ½ teaspoon baking soda

-       ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

-       ¼ teaspoon salt

-       ½ cup graham cracker crumbs (now in the book the authors recommend that you crush 6 crackers and use ½ a cup for the batter, and the remaining crumbs for decoration. I misread this and put all 6 crumbled crackers into the batter. They turned out great anyway J)

For the Frosting:

-       ½ cup nonhydrogenated shortening

-       ½ cup nonhydrogenated margarine

-       3 ½ cups confectioners sugar

-       1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

-       ¼ cup soy milk

For the Topping:

-       2 graham crackers, crumbled

-       3 graham crackers broken into fourths

-       Vegan chocolate curls

DIRECTIONS:

For the Cupcakes:

1.     Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (Have your muffin tin already prepared with liners)

2.     Mix the brown sugar, oil, molasses, yogurt, soy milk, and vanilla in a large bowl.

3.     Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a separate bowl and mix. Add the graham cracker crumbs and mix it together.

A quick note on making graham cracker crumbs without a food processor: So, I did not want to do the extra dishes and wash out my food processor, so I instead opted to crush the graham crackers myself. This is done by placing the graham crackers into two ziplocks, creating a little pillowcase of sorts to house the crumbs. Now, you can use a rolling pin to crush the crackers, or you can be uber-classy like myself and use a half-empty bottle of Kahlua instead.

4.     Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in three batches, mixing it all together after each addition. The batter will get thicker with each addition, so don’t let the initial watery-look make you nervous.

5.     Fill the cupcake liners. (I have gotten into using a measuring cup for ¼ cups because it always allows me to do it in perfect increments)

6.     Bake the cupcakes for 22 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

7.     Transfer to a cooling a rack and let cool completely before frosting

For the Frosting:

1.     Use a hand mixer on medium speed beat together the margarine and shortening until they’re completely combined and have a fluffy consistency.

2.     Add the sugar and beat the ingredients together for around 3 minutes.

3.     Add the vanilla and the soy milk, beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until the entire mixture becomes (as the title says) fluffy.

Okay, so the scent of the batter alone for these cupcakes is worth making this recipe. It smells incredible! The cinnamon and the graham crackers, mixed with the earthy, bitter scent of the molasses smells like heaven, and really homey, too. I also used up almost all of the batter when filling the cupcake tins, so there wasn’t that insane temptation to lick up the leftovers, which is always a plus.

AND, dear readers, the scent of the cupcakes only gets better once they’re baking! It smells like memories of midsummer nights and Christmastime all at once! When I opened the over door to get the cupcakes, I was bowled over by such a warm, sweet, and yet, tender scent. It’s spiciness really makes me recall lying on the grass when all the stars were out, dipping my toes in the freezing cold lake, and putting so much calamine lotion on my bug bites that I might have just resembled a frosted cupcake.

And speaking of frosting…so here is the deal with this frosting. It tastes awesome on the cupcakes, but it isn’t something I really enjoyed licking off my fingers by itself. There’s just a sort of odd chalkiness to it. It’s sweet and all, but for someone who is used to buttercream frosting being made with, you know, butter and cream, it tasted a little “off.” However, the vegan cupcakes themselves are very light and moist, so the frosting actually balanced out well, once topped with the vegan chocolate shavings and graham cracker crumbs, all was perfect on the s’mores campsite.

Now, I know some of you are probably wondering: “how do I make chocolate curls or shavings?” It’s actually pretty simple. You take a vegetable peeler and run it along the side of the room temperature chocolate bar. That’s it. Some of them might come off in long, swinging curls, some of them might come off in tiny little shavings, but either way, they’ll look great on your cupcakes with the other decorations.

DECORATING THE CUPCAKES

Now what cupcake would be complete without some adorable frosting and accouterments? None of them. None of them would. So here are step-by-step instructions to properly “dress” your cupcakes!

1.     Take a naked cupcake and place it on a flat surface

2.     Fill a piping bag with frosting (now, if you don’t have a piping bag, simply fill a Ziploc bag and then cut off one of the corners and squeeze frosting onto the cupcake that way. It ends up looking basically the same)

3.     Sprinkle some graham cracker crumbs onto the frosting

4.     Place a few chocolate shavings onto the frosting

5.     Gently stick a piece of graham cracker into the side of the frosting mound, so it will stay in place.

6.     Voila! S’mores Cupcakes are go!

CUT TO AFTER THE SHOW

So everyone, including the boys, loved these cupcakes! In fact, one of the guys said that this was his favorite recipe thus far! I mean, first off, they look adorable, which is always a plus, AND, these cupcakes smell so delicious that everyone was sniffing them for at least a minute before even taking a bite! So grab the ingredients, enjoy the aroma and then eat, eat, eat!

Til next time,

D

*You can purchase a copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by clicking this link: http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Cupcakes-Take-Over-World/dp/1569242739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339178494&sr=8-1