Hell Yeah It's Vegan!

I’ve needed some cheering up at work this last week, and thus spent some time looking at the Vegan Cupcakes Flickr Pool, which filled my heart with joy. Somewhere in the midst of this, I remembered one of my favorite treats at the coffee shop near my arts high school: cappuccino chocolate-chip muffins. Why not transform this sentiment into a confection?

I generally don’t drink coffee; I understand and appreciate a good cup of it, but for years, I have generally tried to keep unnecessary caffeine out of my diet. But I do love the well-placed coffee flavored confection, particularly when chocolate is incorporated.

Start out with your favorite vegan chocolate cupcake recipe. I’m still in search of the perfect one (not too light, not too dry, and with rounded tops), so send suggestions my way if you have them… but these (with the cocoa powder kicked up a notch) served quite well. I added a quarter cup of whole roasted espresso beans that I chopped finely and added to the batter for a little extra kick.

While researching this recipe, I was looking for a good coffee buttercream, but the recipes I’d found called for “coffee extract.” Extracts are great and all, but generally speaking I avoid buying stuff, especially if I can find a way to make at home. Over the course of the last year, I’ve trash-picked an inordinate amount of instant coffee, probably because while coffee-haters have no use for it, to coffee-lovers, it is near heretical.

What you’ll never believe is that instant coffee dissolves instantly in liquid… even cold liquid. Mix a tablespoon of the granules with a teaspoon of water and you have instant bitter coffee sludge that subs perfectly for coffee extract.

This buttercream frosting is like velvety-smooth spoonfuls of cappuccino ice cream. I suspect I will find many ways to incorporate it, like cake balls. (If you aren’t familiar with cake balls, Google it. If you have even an ounce of Iowan grandma in you, you won’t regret it.)

I filled a pastry bag with (mind-blowingly delicious) coffee buttercream, inserted the tip into the center of each cupcake, and filled them.

Next I made a standard dark chocolate ganache and spread each cupcake with a thin layer of it.

These are hands down one of the best desserts I’ve made, ranking right up there with my much-beloved chocolate peanut butter bombe cupcakes. This is destined to become a new classic.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Desserts, Recipes, Vegan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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