Chloe's cupcake!

I love cupcakes. I've been making mini ones the center of parties for a while, and so I was pretty excited to try my first batch of vegan cupcakes during my "vegan month". But how to pick a recipe? If I'm committing to making a full batch of cupcakes and bringing them to a party, I want to make sure they are really delicious. What better vegan cupcake to pick, in that case, than the one that beat them all in Cupcake Wars? I decided to make the beautiful Chef Chloe's equally beautiful vegan Tiramisu cupcake.

To sum things up, this is an 100% vegan cupcake with a vanilla cake base, hollowed out a bit in the center and filled with a soaking liquid of amaretto and espresso and raspberry sauce, and topped off with a buttercream frosting that's hinted with amaretto & espresso. Is your mouth watering yet? The result is a very sweet, grown-up cupcake, reminiscent of Tiramisu but not overpowering.

Despite having no egg, and almond milk rather than regular milk, these cupcakes came out perfectly... they have a hint of vanilla flavor and are incredibly moist and just a little spongy. A great base cupcake.

I'll defer to Chef Chloe's site for the recipes/instructions for all these components, and just list the ingredients in case a link changes at some point!

Ingredients I used in the cupcakes: 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon salt, ¾ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (T.Joe's brand), ½ cup canola oil, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Next came the raspberry filling. At first I thought I had made it too thin (I used agave syrup rather than sugar, as the recipe calls for either), but after letting it cool in the fridge, the consistency was perfect for a filling. (OR, I'm thinking this would make a great topping to icecream- vegan or not). There's a hint of citrus and cinnamon in the raspberry filling that makes it just awesome.

Ingredients I used in the raspberry sauce: 1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen), a little less than ½ cup agave syrup, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, dash of salt

I pretty much followed the recipe to a T, other than I only made 6 regular sized cupcakes- with the rest of the batter, I made 24 mini cupcakes, since people at parties tend to be scared off of committing to a full-sized cupcake (even though they will eat 2 or 3 minis!)

The results:

These are the mini ones only:


Soaking liquid ingredients: 1/3 cup amaretto and 1 Tablespoon instant espresso

Frosting ingredients: 1 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening, 3 cups powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons water, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Add to taste: 2 tablespoons instant espresso powders mixed wiht 2 tablespoons amaretto.

Some notes:
-Definitely take Chloe's advice and don't add all the espresso mixture to the frosting at once. I might have used about half of it in total to get the right consistency and flavor.
-The frosting is REALLY sweet. I'm wondering if some of the sugar could be cut back...
-Overall, a really delicious, sophisticated cupcake. They do take a bit longer than your average cupcake to make, but the result is worth it!
-I just might have eaten the scooped out parts of the cupcakes that Chloe says to 'discard'.... hey, you have to make sure they taste ok, right? ;-)