In case you didn’t already know, last Friday RAOP turned 1! To celebrate I launched a super special giveaway (enter before Friday!) but it wouldn’t really be a birthday without some cake too right?
I really wanted to make a teeny tiny cake this time around, but I wasn’t really sure how, so there was a lot of trial and error involved, and a lot of icing ended up on my hands, clothing, and floor by the time I had figured it out! All complications aside though, I think they turned out pretty darn adorable.
To get started, I turned to one of my all-time favourite cookbooks, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Ive been using this genius little guide so intensely for so many years that almost every single page is all marked up and stained! for this creation, I used the basic golden vanilla cupcakes recipe, but took out the cornstarch and added three kinds of lemon flavour. For the icing, I used the vegan fluffy buttercream icing recipe from the same book, but I made a special strawberry milk to make it pink and give it a sweet strawberry flavour.
Ingredients:
For the Cake
1 cup almond milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 Earth Balance Margarine
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 tsp lemon extract (optional)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest
For the Icing
1/2 cup Earth Balance shortening
1/2 cup Earth Balance whipped buttery spread
4 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 cup strawberries, chopped
Method:
For the Cake
Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a muffin pan. Combine almond milk with apple cider vinegar in a bowl and set aside for 5 minutes or more to curdle. Mix all of the dry cake ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl with a mixer (standing or hand), cream margarine and sugar until fluffy, then beat in vanilla, almond extract, all lemon ingredients, soy milk mixture, and dry ingredients.
Once all of the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, separate the batter into three bowls, and use natural red food colouring to make a pink gradient (I left one bowl white, one light pink, and one darker pink). Once satisfied with the colour, pour the batter into the muffin tin and bake for about 20 minutes, rotating once. When the cupcakes are fully baked, remove them from the oven and set them aside to cool.
For the Icing
Cream the shortening and butter together with a mixer, than gradually add in 3 of the 4 cups of icing sugar. Using a blender, puree the chopped strawberries with the almond milk, then gradually add that mixture to your icing. If the icing is too runny after adding the strawberry milk, add more icing sugar until thick and creamy!
Prep
Remove the cupcakes from the muffin tin and cut the tops off (you can save them and eat them later dipped in the extra icing!) Carefully cut each cake into two parts, then stack them up in the order you desire. Using icing, stick them together like you would a regular layer cake, and ice the top when you’re done. You can leave them just like that, or decorate with sprinkles, candles, flags, rainbow coconut shreds, or whatever suits your fancy!
