Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (2 page)

“[Features] dairy-free desserts that are tasty enough to fool most omnivores.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Good, honest vegan recipes with broad appeal.”
-Associated Press

“Creative, inventive and yummy ... amazingly decadent desserts.”—
Herbivore

FOREWORD

By Sara Quin
TEGAN AND SARA

 

 

 

M
Y GRANDMA WAS a punk chef. don’t know that she would have acknowledged the term, but at heart, she was always breaking the rules and ignoring the instructions of her own recipes (scrawled on sticky index cards). She knew best what the pie crust needed, and not even her own messy scribbling in the margins could convince her otherwise. Yet even with a hip role model like my grandma teaching me the ropes, I always hated to cook.

 

 

Then I fell in love with a passionate individual with a crazy hobby for grocery shopping and extravagant dinners. On our first date, I stared in panic at a mound of mango chutney and wondered what the hell to do with it. So I started calling my grandma to ask her for my favorite childhood recipes, which I then wrote down on my own set of index cards. Maybe there was a punk chef in me after all!

 

 

One of my earliest memories of cupcakes is from elementary school. Cupcake Day was run by parent volunteers who donated dozens of cupcakes to sell at the bargain price of 25 cents. At recess we would be lined up in the main hallway of my school and then slowly released into the front lobby, where hundreds of cupcakes were displayed on splintered, wooden tables. I still feel anxious when I think about the sweaty quarter in the palm of my hand, waiting to be traded for a single cupcake.

 

 

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
is my dream come true. The “oohhs” and “aahhs” that my partner and I get when we present Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s cupcakes at dinner
parties is well worth tying on an apron for. I plan on enjoying each one ofthe innovative delights found in this book while pretending that they contribute to my healthy lifestyle. Vegans need

some indulgence, too! If my grandma were still baking today, I would excitedly send herthis collection of cupcake recipes. Even though she might ignore all ofthe instructions....

INTRODUCTION

W
ELCOME TO
Vegan Cupcakes Take
Over the
World!

 

 

Who would think that something as simple and unassuming as a cupcake would bring about the revolution? The world is enraptured with this tiny cake—maybe it’s our selfishness, knowing that the cake is “Mine! All mine!” Maybe it’s our obsession with beauty; cupcakes, like flowers, seem to have the perfect proportions to capture our eye. Maybe they speak to the child in all of us, our yearning for a simpler time, where a little something sweet was a reminder that there was something to celebrate.

 

And, vegan cupcakes are the ultimate subversive tool. They can be snuck into the office, birthday parties, bat mitzvahs, the

Super Bowl, what have you. Innocent and adorable, no one will suspect that these toothsome morsels are cruelty-free. No one will miss the dairy—and why should they? These cakes taste just as good, and some may argue
even better
than their outmoded counterparts.

 

We believe in the evolution of dessert. We don’t want to be bogged down with the rigmarole of what has been and what will always be. We simply
don’t need
dairy and eggs to have sweet, satisfying, and decadent treats. It’s time to move on. Have we mentioned that moving on has never tasted so damn good?

 

This book has been a labor of love for us. We decided to write it for the simple reason
that people freak out over our cupcakes. We spent months and months with our dedicated group of testers making sure that they were up to par not only for the vegan palate, but for omnivores as well. Test subjects included cubicle mates, skeptical parents, cab drivers, beefy football guys, kindergarten graduates, grandmothers, D&D nerds ... they ran the gamut. It was a fun sociological experiment, as sometimes they knew the cupcakes were vegan, other times not. But across the board they were impressed. Our little cupcakes set out on their mission to change the world and they did their job tenfold.
Amor vincit omnia.
Love really does conquer all! Viva la Cupcake!

CUPCAKES A TO Z

WHY
CUPCAKES? WE feel that this question can only be answered with an A to Z list.

 

ADORABLE.
This one is obvious. Who doesn’t think cupcakes are cute? Off the top of our heads, probably only Dick Cheney.

BLOGWORTHY.
A surefire way to get people to look at your blog is by posting pic tures of cupcakes. No one wants to hear about your terrible day at the office or what you think of China’s space program. They want to see pictures of cup cakes, trust us.

CRAFTY.
You can get all creative in the kitchen without the glue or the scrap-book that no one wants to look at.

DELICIOUS.
They taste good.

EVERYWHERE.
Cupcakes are everywhere. So the logic follows that if cupcakes are everywhere, people must love cupcakes, therefore they will love a book about cupcakes.

FORKS.
Fork it, who needs forks? Eat with your hands.

GIFTS.
Cupcakes make the best gift! I dare you to give someone a cupcake and have them not smile.

HOME.
Baking makes a house a home. Whether, like us, you live in a hovel, or you live in a penthouse on Madison Avenue (yuppie), if you don’t have the heavenly, fresh-baked-goods scent wafting from your kitchen, then you aren’t really home. You are just in four enclosed walls.

ICING.
Whether you like to plow through it
first or savor it till the end, icing is the icing on the cake. Literally.

JOY
. Unbridled.

KNIVES.
Again, no need for all that messed up slicing when one person gets a huge slice and someone else, a dilapidated sliver. Cupcakes are the great leveler wherein we are all equals.

LOVE.
Nothing says love like a cupcake does. If you don’t bake someone a cupcake then you don’t really care about them.

MOODS.
There is a cupcake to fit your every mood. A diet therapist may tell you that being an emotional eater is unhealthy, and they would probably be right. But who wants to be right when you could be eating a cupcake?

N0.
People say “no” too often. Cupcakes will make them say “yes.”

OLIGARCHY.
Vegan cupcakes will take over the world. Better to give in sooner rather than later and make this a smooth transition.

PORTABLE.
You can take cupcakes anywhere. Walk down the street eating a piece of cake and you will look like a crazy person. But walk down the street eating a cupcake? Your sexiness factor will increase by at least 70 percent, according to our studies.

QUICK.
Cupcakes bake very quickly and you with your busy schedule can use your newfound free time to do things that are important to you, like building a shelf for all your cupcake supplies.

RELAXING.
Piping frosting from a pastry bag sets your soul at ease.

SHOPPING.
You will soon find yourself perusing the baking supply stores with a purpose. Now you can admire decorating tips and pastry bags with the pros.

TRANSCENDENTAL.
We will bake with our own hands; we will frost with our own icing; we will speak with our own mouths full.

UTILITARIAN.
No pesky plates and forks to wash afterward. Fewer dishes, more efficiency.

VOLUPTUOUS.
Doesn’t your butt need a little extra padding? Sure it does.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.
Cupcakes are the fuel of the revolution. Let them eat cake. No really, let them eat cake.

XXX.
Cupcakes are sexy.

YAWN.
Writing A to Z lists gets very tiring. Quit reading this and start making cupcakes.

ZZZZZ.
Especially when you get to Z. Now, seriously, go make some cupcakes.

PART ONE

HOW TO MAKE KICK-ASS CUP CAKES

INGREDIENTS

L
ET’S TALK FOR a moment about what makes a cupcake tick.

You can’t really make much of a cupcake without flour, so we recommend that you buy the best quality flours that you can. Experiment with different combinations for cupcakes of various textures and flavors, or with whole grains for healthier cupcakes with more fiber and nutrients.

 

ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR
is the flour most often used for our cupcakes. Like the name says, it’s a multi-use flour that results in light-textured, fluffy cupcakes with a nice crumb. It’s not a nutrition superstar but you can up the fiber and nutrient content by substituting a little whole-grain flour in the recipes (see below). We like unbleached flour because of its creamy color—and because we believe that bleach is better off in one’s hair, not one’s cupcakes.

 

WHOLE WHEAT PASTRY FLOUR
is an excellent way to add whole grain goodness to cupcakes. Unlike regular whole wheat flour, which can make cupcakes too heavy, whole wheat pastry flour has less gluten and is ground much finer, resulting in a tender, fine-crumbed cake. You can substitute up to half the unbleached flour in a recipe with whole wheat pastry with excellent results. As in “your cupcake eaters will never guess that you’re feeding them a whole grain” results.

RICE, QUINOA, AND OTHER NON-WHEAT, NON-GLUTEN-CONTAINING FLOURS
are not used extensively in this book but it’s nothing personal. Generally, substituting ¼ cup of other flour out of every 1 cup of wheat flour works just fine. Using more means you’ll get different—sometimes interesting, sometimes unpredictable—results. Some of our testers have had much success with quinoa flour in particular, but more often than not, successful wheat-free baking requires a blending ofthree or more flours. We’re not experts regarding gluten free baking but we love gluten-free people just the same, hence a little cupcake recipe on page 46.

 

FLOURS TO AVOID:
Anything that says it’s for making bread. Those kinds offlours have too much gluten and can result in heavy, too-chewy cupcakes. Regular whole wheat flour is also too heavy and coarse for cupcakes (but great in muffins; then again, this book isn’t called
Muffins Take Overthe World,
is it?). We generally don’t mess with self-rising flour, but if you love it go ahead—just be sure to omit the baking soda and baking powder from the recipes.