St. Patrick's Day Bake Sale Cupcakes

Vegan Bake Sale Insanity

Naturally the girls' school just HAS to have a bake sale on St. Patrick's Day (I wonder why we can't salute the patron saint of Ireland with something more appropriate like snake cookies or something) and as is typical, I don't find out about it until 7:PM the night before, which leaves us scrambling to make some thing "eye-catching and appealing to grade-schoolers"...ugh...

Don't laugh!

I really wasn't looking forward to a vegan baking challange at 7 in the evening, but what to do...

Could we do this and maintain the vegan-ness of our kitchen? We wondered (well, OK, I wondered...) if it wouldn't just be easier to go buy some boxed mixes but after taking stock of what cake recipes I actually had, and what ingredients were in the cupboards, we came up with some pretty-good, but disgusting green, sugar-overloaded little bake-sale worthy goodies...

I'm really proud of all the effort my middle Sprout put into helping bake these...

Instead of cupcakes (how traditional!) we made mini-Bundt cakes (about the size of cupcakes) in a White Cake (with some confetti sprinkles added for an obnoxious colorful touch) drizzled with green icing, AND some Chocolate Decadance mini-cakes with chocolate glaze and (of all things!!) green sugar sprinkles!! ALL of it vegan. (OK, well, I can't vouch for the sprinkles 100% because though I usually buy animal-free ones now, we used whatever we had in the house last night!).

This is not one of my shining moments as a Vegan (or healthy) cook, but my kids were absolutely thrilled with the results - as were all the sugar-grubbing little gradeschoolers who bought out the Bake-Sale's mini-cakes within 15 minutes!! And no one complained that they were "VEE-GUN"!

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The first recipe is a simple and basic white cake mix that I veganized without really realizing it, some time back... we added some multi-colored candy sprinkles to the batter. (Looks like that "Funfetti Cake" crap you can buy in a mix, only ours was better). It uses Egg Replacer, which you can find at Whole Foods and most health food stores, however, I have made it without the egg replacer and it came out fine - a bit more moist and dense, but still good.

White CupCakes

1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine
3 cups unbleached flour
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. salt
1 Tb. EnerGee Egg Replacer powder
2 cups soy milk, rice milk, or other non-dairy milk of choice
1 T. vanilla
1 t. almond extract
1/4 cup confetti cake decorating sprinkles
Lightly oil a 9x13-inch pan and set aside. (Or in this case, we used Mini-Bundt pans.

Using an electric mixer or in a large bowl with a hand held mixer, place the sugar and mqargerine, and cream together until light and fluffy. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, Energee Egg replacer and salt.
Add dry ingredients into the creamed mixture, alternating with the soy milk, and continuing to beat the mixture well between each addition. Add the vanilla and almond extract and beat the mixture an additional 2 minutes at medium speed. Gently stir in the confettis.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, cupcake pans or mini-Bundt pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 iminutes (Less for the cupcakes or Mini-bundts...) or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Glaze or frost as desired.
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The second recipe (for the chocolate cupcakes) is much healthier and probably a little more labor-intensive, but my 12-year-old managed to make these just fine with no help from me...

We chose to use it because we happened to have the ingredients available. (I was SO not in the mood to go to the grocer at 7:PM!!). Ironically, I got this recipe from a "Healthy Cooking" class that I attended years ago. I've since modified the recipe quite a bit to suit my preferences.

This makes a really dense, rich, moist chocolate cake/cupcake. Just the way chocolate should be...

I included a chocolate icing recipe here, though for this particular event, we used store bought frosting that we had on hand. (Read your labels, but most store-bought frostings are "accidently" vegan, though they will be loaded with all sorts of gacky hydrogenated oils and such).

Almost-Healthy Chocolate Cupcakes

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (or you can use carob powder if you're in to that sort of thing, which I am not!)

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate soymilk
3/4 cup sugar (the recipe calls for honey, or pure maple syrup)
1/2 cup hot, well-cooked long-grain brown or white rice
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Oil two 8" round cake pans or 12 cupcake tins; set aside.

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl; set aside.
Combine wet ingredients in a blender container, and blend until very smooth.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, and stir to combine. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 20 to 25 minutes for cakes, 15 to 20 minutes for cupcakes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake or cupcake emerges clean. Cool slightly before turning onto a wire rack.

Glaze with Chocolate Glaze.

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Glaze/Icing
1 cup sugar
6 T corn starch
4 T cocoa
1/2 t salt
2 T oil
1 cup water
1/2 t vanilla
Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cocoa in a medium sauce pan. Whisk in the water. Heat over medium until it gets thick and starts to boil. Boil for 1-2 minutes (make sure you don't boil too long, or it will set like toffee). Remove from heat and stir in oil and vanilla. Cool and spread on cooled cake. If you prefer a thinner glaze, add more water.