I shall start with something sugary as a sweet start to this blog.
Cupcake has been popular for a number of years in the U.S. Naturally, vegan communities in the U.S. has also been tackling the balance between their taste buds and a life style they have chosen. A number of vegan cook books have taken on the challenge to make that happen, and one of the most distinguished and recognizable cupcake cook book is called "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule", which includes an admirable effort and astonishing number of cupcakes and tips to make cupcakes vegan.
My sister has made some cupcakes a while back when I went back to the U.S. After I bit into the consistency and the taste, I asked for the recipe. She has modified the cupcake recipe a bit, but the recipe was originally based on "Golden Vanilla Cupcakes" from a recipe site called "Culinate". What I found most challenging in vegan cake-making (or baking) is that the ratio of oil, sugar and flour often deceives the outcome. What I mean is that when you measured the amount, everything seems to be in order, but once the outcome reveals in its mysterious way, I would see that the cake is actually way too greasy (in a "moist" sense, since oil gives the "moist" feeling in cakes) or that the outcome is way too sweet. Having trouble testing recipes as I did, I came to develope a rule of thumb in regards to making cakes, the sugar and flour volumn ratio is usually about 1.5:2 (please refer to the ratios that I work for me if you want some reference).
After knowing my sister's modifications, I started testing my own modification... So here is my take on the vegan cupcakes.
What I chose for the ingredients:
First of all, I used a type of margarine, I guess, what is commonly used in a lot of vegan recipe as a replacement to butter, "margarine", which is a plant-based, industrially derived oil. Margarine typically higher in "saturated fat" (vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated, hydrogenated, and in some cases trans fat, or "gehärtetes Öl", "gehärtetes Fett", here's a nice diagram denoting how long these industrially-made molecules are on Wikipedia page, the longer they are, the less able your body can process them). This brings out a question of German's food labeling, but that is a topic for another day. I chose this brand after carefully reading the ingredients and selecting them. Most of all German margarines I came across in any store have "hydrogenated oil" (gehärtetes Öl) as one of their ingredients. Try to eat as healthy and not taking a toll on my body as much as possible, I almost never choose product that has "partially hydrogenated oil" or "hydrogenated oil" in it. Finally, there was a product that doesn't state it as an ingredient and looks very legit (although in reality, the nutritional values are not stated clearly, it doesn't separate the "unsaturated fat" and "saturated fat" like the U.S. FDA would have required), the "Flora Reform-Margarine" (found in Berlin's "Real" and "Kaufland" grocery stores):
The detailed description of the product and why I chose this product over the others is on "Ingredients Reference" page.
For pure soy milk, I mean just extracted from pure soy and water, without all those calcium-something, flavorings and salt. There are a number of brands out there, the easiest place to access those in Berlin is undoubtedly health-conscious, organic-oriented health food store "Vitalia Reformhaus". I used granoVita's Soja-Drink:
Vinegar has to be the lightly favorful cooking vinegar ("Tafel Essig"), such as apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar (unsweetened) or wine vinegar, about 5% acidity are all O.K. But definitely NOT heavy flavored ones like balsamic and other ones out there (fruit-flavored and Chinese dark vinegar 烏醋, you know just who you are!).
All-purpose flour means it's not weak flour ("cake flour" or type 550) and contains more gluten than weak flour and will result in slightly harder outcome. Although it is not that big of an issue, use what you have on hand, just try not to use those contains more high gluten, unless you have a special fondness to chewy cakes, then I would have absolutely no objection.
Recipes from the U.S. usually state the unit by volume, which is a great reference if you have no weight in your kitchen (described as "weightless", hehehehehehehe...) to do a volume ratio. Here I will also do the same and give relative weight of the ingredients.
Golden Vegan Vanilla "Just-As-Nice-and-Even-Better-For-the-Earth" Cupcake
Preparation time: about 10 minutes (batter)
Baking time: about 20 minutes
Yield: about a dozen cupcakes
| Metrics Measurements | U.S. Measurements | Ingredients |
| 250 ml (300mg) | 1 cup | soy milk, unsweetened and unflavored ("plain" or "original" soy-and-water soy milk) |
| 5 mL (5g) | 1 teaspoon | apple cider vinegar (or any other 5%-acidity, light-flavored, like wine vinegar, rice vinegar, but NOT balsamic or anything like that) |
| 312.5 mL (170g) | 1¼ cup | all-purpose flour (wheat, of course, Mehltyp 405 or 550) |
| 30 mL (7.5g) (OR 15 mL) | 2 tablespoons (OR 1½ tablespoon) | corn starch (Maisstärke, or any old baking starch) (instead of corn starch, use flaxseed meal) (OR flaxseed meal) |
| 3.7 mL (11g) | ¾ teaspoon | baking powder ("Backpulver") |
| 2.5 mL (7.5g) | ½ teaspoon | baking soda ("Natron") |
| 2.5 mL (10g) | ½ teaspoon | salt |
| 62.5 mL (50g) | ¼ cup | non-hydrogenated plain margarine with no flavorings (like salt or olive...), softened in room temperature |
| 83 mL (74g) | ¼ cup | vegetable oil |
| 180 mL (90g) | ¾ cup | brown sugar |
| 5 mL (7g) | 2 teaspoons | vanilla extract (or vanilla sugar) |
| 1.25 mL (2g) | ¼ teaspoon | almond extract (or caramel extract or MORE vanilla extract if you don't have them! Yay!) |
Direction:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F (or 175°C).
2. Add vinegar into soy milk in a bowl, let it sit a couple of minutes while you prepare other stuff.
3. Whip together the margarine, oil, brown sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract till it gets fluffy (and if you don't have a device to do that for you, simply stir evenly). Then add in the soy milk.
4. In a separate large bowl, combine in flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda and salt, then add in the oil-sugar-soy milk mixture.
Make sure there is no clumps of flour.
5. Lay the muffin/cupcake parchment paper ("Backpapier") cups, and pour into the muffin baking tray and pour in the batter into the cups till about 85% to 90% filled.
6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. The cupcakes are done when they appear golden yellow and/or poked with a stick and pulled out with no batter sticking on it.
7. After taken out of the oven, make sure to take them out of the tray, or else the water vapor gets accumulated on tray and the cupcakes.
What about the signature cream on top of the cupcakes?
For the amount of one cupcake cream, whip or cream together (by hand or machine) about :
Preparation time: 7 minutes
Yield: cream for just one cupcake
1 tablespoon (15 ml or 6 g) confectioner's sugar, unbleached powdered sugar ("Zucker Pulver"), add more if the feel it's not up to your sugar-craving standard.
1 tablespoon (15 ml or 12.5 g) margarine
Powdered sugar and white sugar (any old white cane sugar, sugar extracted from cane or "Zuckerrohr") usually uses a refining filter that contains animal bone char, which is a de-coloration process or bleaching process. This would make vast majority of the commercial powdered sugar non-vegetarian and especially non-vegan. However, if the sugar comes from sugar beet ("Zuckerrübe"), it will not go through this process and is considered vegan by the pourists. In Germany, since cane is grown in warmer locations like sub-tropical or tropical area, majority of the sugar will be derived from sugar beet, so it'd be safe to say that most of the sugar you see in Germany is from sugar beet. (Although I cannot guarantee if they combine cane sugar and beet sugar in the process for some reason or the other...)
To avoid this issue, you can simply use finer sized brown sugar, or use a salt crasher to create finer sugar.
Then you can add any flavor you like and combine the creamed sugar-margarine mixture! Here are some examples:
Coffee
a small dash of ground coffee powder
½ teaspoon (1.25 ml or 1 g) coffee (you know, share a little of your coffee from your brewed coffee, sharing is caring!)
Cherry (Strawberry flavor is the same way also!)
1 teaspoon of cherry jam
Chocolate
1 teaspoon of unsweetened plain cocoa powder
And maybe some sprinkle of dark cocoa chocolate on top of the cupcake after putting on the cream (make sure there is no diary product in there)
Coconut
2 teaspoons (or more if you want it to be stronger) coconut powder (available in most Asian markets)
If you want, sprinkle on some coconut shreds on top of the cream on the cupcake to please your eyes, teehee!
Be creative, it's up to you to make some new flavors! :]
I hope you guys enjoyed it!
You might be interested in making blueberry-banana muffins, too!
Curious about how to make soy milk yourself?
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