Chocolate cupcakes with coffee-caramel ermine frosting

These are the go-to chocolate cupcakes that I've blogged about previously. I also thought I'd try making an ermine frosting, using Cupcake Jemma's Ermine Buttercream as my jumping-off point. Of note, the flour/sugar mixture that gets toasted in the beginning was probably starting to caramellize a bit when I added the coconut milk to it, so I accidentally ended up with a delightful caramel frosting that I also added about 1/2 tsp of of instant coffee granules to, to get a coffee-caramel result (I was inspired by our local vegan doughnut shop's chocolate coffee toffee flavoured doughnut).

The frosting turned out incredibly delicious, but — as is often the case when I'm using soy-free margarine in place of butter — the result was less firm than I was hoping for. I think I might mess around with the flour ratios in the future to try to stabilize it further. Also, the recipe makes at least three times more frosting than was necessary for a batch of a dozen cupcakes, so I could easily halve the amounts to get a good amount of frosting for a dozen cupcakes in the future. In the plus column, I now have a lot of frosting ready-to-go, in the freezer.

My version as follows:

75g All-Purpose Flour
400g Granulated Sugar
460g Coconut Milk
460g Soy-Free Vegan Margarine

Sea Salt to taste
Instant Coffee Granules to taste
1 tsp Vanilla Extract to taste

Vegan Pudding Chômeur II

Cake

• 110 g all-purpose flour
• 55 g whole wheat flour
• 105 g white granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
(left this quantity as-is, because I found the original recipe tasted a little too much of baking soda)
• 1/8 tsp salt, plus about 1/16 tsp salt
• 75 g neutral oil
• 113 g plain vegan yogurt
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract

Sauce

• 225 g maple syrup (I was able to find late-season Grade A Amber by the can(!) at the local Farm Boy)
• 50 g plant based milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• splash of apple cider vinegar

The last batch of these ended up being sweeter than I'd have cared for, so — while I added 50% to almost everything in the cake recipe to fill 6 ramekins — I kept the sauce quantity as-is in the original recipe. I didn't bother with cooking the sauce this time and it still turned out as intended. The cider vinegar was added to try to build some depth of flavour into the sauce, but I found it didn't make much of a difference. I found it surprising that the maple flavour didn't come through much at all, and think I'll try adding a bit of maple extract next time to try to boost that.

Finally got around to making Pudding Chômeur

Vegan Pudding Chômeur!

I used The Quaint Kitchen's recipe, making a batch-and-half to ensure I'd have enough to fill 6 ramekins. The vegan yogurt I used was President's Choice Coconut Cultured Yogurt, and I the plant "milk" was just the septic-packaged stuff I keep in the pantry (I think this time it was Silk brand).

Mini loaves of bread!

Here's the recipe I used as a reference. I ended up subbing in 1/3 of the flour with whole wheat flour, as well as 15 g of vital wheat gluten. I also used melted margarine in place of the olive oil.

Butter Chicken Pizza!

I've been using up leftover butter chicken (when such a thing exists — this one's made with KFI's Vegan Butter Chicken Sauce) by using The Kitchn's No Knead Bread recipe as a jumping-off point for making a batch of pizza dough (replacing ⅓ of the a.p. flour with whole wheat flour), putting that on a sheet pan, and topping it with the yummy-ness.

It's been such a hit that it gets made fairly often around here these days.

Beef Birria Tacos!

Made up a pot of beef birria last Friday, using Joshua Weissman's Beef Quesa Tacos as my jumping-off point. My adaptations included having all 3 lbs. of beef be beef rib "finger meat", using 6 guajillo chiles in place of all of the chiles, freshly-ground black pepper in place of the peppercorns, and replacing the fresh oregano with half the amount of dried oregano. The flavour is amazingly complex and satisfying.

The picture above is of the beef birria served on half-corn and half-flour tortillas, with quick-pickled shallots (salt, sugar, and lime juice were added) and fresh cilantro. This is one of my favourite things to have ever eaten.

Pumpkin doughnuts with coconut glaze

I've had Pro Home Cooks/Brothers Green Eats/Mike G's "Healthy" Doughnut recipe on my to-do list ever since it was published a couple of years ago. The promise of a good, but not overly sweet, doughnut glaze was tempting. I took the occasion of Caty's birthday a couple of days ago to make my own version (as, obviously, mine cannot include butter, milk or eggs).

Kabocha Pumpkin Doughnut

• one 398 mL can pureed pumpkin (the stuff in my cupboard happened to be organic)
• 4 T (60 g) vegan margarine, melted
• 1 cup (250 mL) hemp milk
• 1 T (15 mL) honey
• 1 T yeast
• the equivalent of 2 eggs in egg replacer powder
• 5 cups of flour
• ½ t salt

I melted the margarine and added the room-temperature hemp milk, pulling the mixture off the heat. It was lukewarm at this point and I added the honey and stirred in the yeast. Into the large bowl of my stand mixer, I added the flour, egg replacer powder and salt and used the dough hook to stir it together. Once the yeast mixture had formed a sponge, I added it and the pumpkin to the flour mixture and began the mixer on low. The original amount of flour called for in the recipe has nowhere near adequate, so I kept adding flour until I ended up with a wet dough, banking on it needing to rest to stop being sticky. I allowed that to proof, covered, for about an hour, then punched it down and began cutting out the doughnuts, laying them on parchment squares on a baking sheet for easy removal. Those were allowed to proof further, for an hour, under a floured cloth. For this batch, I fried the two "extra" doughnuts day-of, and allowed the remaining 12 to do a slow-rise overnight in the fridge. I can't say that the pumpkin really brings anything to this dough, unfortunately. It makes the dough denser than my ideal doughnut would be, but could be a good fritter base if I wanted to experiment with spicing it in the future.

As for the glaze, I adapted the original recipe as well.

Coconut Glaze (makes two batches worth)

• ~1 cup (half a 498 mL jar) coconut manna
• 1 tsp gelatin
• 1 T hemp milk, plus enough to get to desired consistency
• ¾ cup icing sugar
• pinch of salt
• ~1 tsp vanilla

I'd tried to use the recommended amount of sugar, but found that it was barely sweet, and would definitely not be sweet enough to make the doughnut worth eating, so I had to bump up the amount considerably. I am, however, a huge fan of using the coconut manna as a "filler"; it makes the glaze coconut-flavoured without being overpowering. I also found that the gelatin didn't cause the glaze to set up as nicely as it did for the original recipe — it was still a bit gel-like even when "dry". That said, I'd absolutely work with this again, seeing about omitting the gelatin entirely next time, and maybe using a coconut milk (or citrus juice!) instead of the hemp milk.

This was a decent "start" towards something really good, but I can't claim that I thought it was a great substitute for a traditional yeasted doughnut.