Mexican Hot Chocolate Vegan Cupcakes

This is the year of cupcakes.






















Carla and Dave gave me Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for Christmas. It's written by a couple of vegan woman who write a fun blog called The Post Punk Kitchen.






















I've heard some really mixed things about this book, and I've already had some mixed experiences myself.





















Carla likes it, and has successfully made a bunch of the recipes from it. My friend Matthew doesn't like it so much, though he also claims not to be a good baker in general.


The s'mores cupcakes didn't work out at all, but I blame myself. The thing is, I think I need to learn a few things about vegan baking. There are some ingredients for which you can substitute their dairy counterparts, like butter, but others that need whatever vegan thing they call for. Since I'm new to vegan baking, I'm not always sure which is which.


















With the s'more cupcakes, I used actual skim milk instead of the soy milk I should have used. The consistency is so different, I don't know what I was expecting to happen. The batter tasted great (or so I hear...) but it was really runny and they didn't bake up well at all. Live and learn.


Again, I'm going to avoid posting the recipe straight out of the book. Instead, I found someone else's post with the same recipe. Click here! We used regular skim milk and coconut extract instead of coconut milk (I was out). Other than that, we followed the recipe and topped them with powdered sugar instead of icing.

These cupcakes were amazing, and I'm not exaggerating. They had an incredible, soft, light texture, and the taste was really unique. Cayenne, cinnamon, and chocolate go really well together. If you're hesitant about buying the book, I'd recommend searching for similar recipes (using the book title) on the internet to see if you like them.

It snowed like crazy the whole time Dave and Carla were here. Here's a link to a video of it snowing outside the window, and then a good shot of the cupcakes. You can enjoy listening to my mundane descriptions of the snow.