I found this recipe for vegan vanilla bean cupcakes with chocolate ganache that looks really good and which I've been anxious to try. So finally today this baker got to make her first vegan cakey thing!!
They were super easy to make, though the batter came out way runnier than I'm used to. Instead of a vanilla bean I used the equivalent of vanilla bean paste, which is 1 tablespoon. It worked great.
I also welcomed the lack of Egg Replacer, which is another reason why I was so curious about how this recipe would turn out. I'm not crazy about that chemical-y aftertaste Egg Replacer imparts on stuff. This recipe uses cornstarch as a thickener, and canola oil for the fat. It leavens not only with baking powder but also with baking soda and almond milk curdled with apple cider vinegar.
As the recipe promised, it would yield 12 cupcakes, and that's exactly how much batter there was. Using an ice cream scoop is the way to go when pouring batter into cupcake cups.
After 20 min, out from the oven they came.
Although they look a little 'wet', they were all nicely cooked through. I just haaaaad to taste one right away to check for things like moisture, texture and, well... flavor.
These cupcakes are super-duper moist. So much so that the paper cupcake liner comes out a little saturated with oil. I don't see the need to spray them with non-stick spray. And the vanilla paste worked great as far as taste goes. They're also not very sweet. These are the type of cupcakes that you can just eat directly, without having to make an icing or anything for them, they're that moist. A sprinkling of vegan powdered sugar might have even been enough. I really enjoyed their moisture level and that nice and strong vanilla bean taste.
For the ganache I used vanilla-flavored coconut milk instead of the almond milk in the recipe. I finished the almond milk carton for the cake, had the coconut milk carton already open, and I love the mix of coconut with chocolate. So I thought "What the hay, use coconut milk." I used vegan chocolate chips and pure maple syrup like the recipe calls for.
I'm not sure why but my chips didn't melt as evenly as I would have liked. I don't know if it's because they're vegan chips, or maybe my heat was too high, or what. Normally classic ganache is made by bringing cream to a boil and adding it to the chopped chocolate (or chips if that's what you're using) and then mixing so that the chips start to melt right away from the hot cream. These were melted into the boiling milk at low heat. So I'm not sure if it was the vegan chips or just something about the amount of heat, or maybe that I used coconut milk instead of almond milk.
I did love the way maple syrup gave the ganache sweetness and cut into the bitterness from the chocolate without making the whole thing taste like chocolatey pancake syrup. I thought the use of maple syrup was perfect.
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| Chunky ganache. Gotta work on that. |
Despite my chunky-ish ganache, taste and texture-wise these vegan cupcakes were really, really good. I'm impressed with the moisture and texture of the cupcake. I'd be curious to try melted Earth Balance butter in place of the canola oil.
Oh, and I need to work on my vegan ganache some more. :-)
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