Vegans — They're Just Like Us!

Haha, no, they're not.

Kidding! I'm not prejudiced against vegans. Some of my closest friends are vegans! It's just that, to an omnivore, veganism can be a little baffling. No cheese? Those two words next to one another do not compute. And to the voracious dessert consumer, the idea of baking vegan treats is downright preposterous. But over recent years, my omnivore friends have been dropping like flies (er, is there a more cruelty-free phrase? Dropping like acorns?) and I've adjusted my baking ways in order to properly celebrate birthdays and holidays so it doesn't look like I prepared 24 cupcakes that only I can eat ("It really wasn't on purpose! I thought you could eat eggs as long as they disappeared into something!").

This photo is just to show that it was perfect cupcake-baking weather.

When I first baked vegan cupcakes, I did look with disgust upon the apple cider vinegar (vinegar! Gah!) in the recipe, but to my surprise, I literally cannot tell the difference between these cupcakes and those that feature animal products. What's more, Pillsbury-brand frosting is totally vegan. That's reason alone to celebrate — a brand of sweet stuff that I already know and love can be accepted by vegans and omnivores alike.

In this recipe, there's an option to use all vanilla extract or to use some vanilla and some almond extract. I'd never tried the almond for these cupcakes, so I did this time and I kinda regret it. The cupcakes are supposed to be chocolate, and they look like they're chocolate, but they taste almost entirely like sweet almond. Bleh. I wasn't psyched about that. But otherwise they were vegan cupcakes fit for an omnivore! (Sorry, sorry.)

Best. Vineyard Name. EVAR!

I've never tried any wine from this vineyard and I'm already in love with it. It's called Cupcake Vineyard! Seriously, the best name ever.

I want to try all their wines and then put the bottles all over my house.

Cupcakes. Wine. Bliss!

Cupcake Camp San Francisco 2009

I'm not totally sure what I was expecting, but from the name "Cupcake Camp" my thoughts vaguely had to do with Kumbaya Cupcakes or "Capture the Cupcake" games. In reality, from what I could tell, Cupcake Camp was more like a mildly organized cupcake free-for-all bonanza in which cupcake-loving San Franciscans could bring their cupcakes for people to eat. For free. You didn't even have to bake them yourself! You could just bring store-bought cupcakes and set them up at a table and give them to people. That's it!

Now, I love cupcakes. So this was a cool, interesting thing to experience. Several people brought multitudes of miniature cupcakes in several different flavors — so I tried a spicy gingerbread-y mini-cupcake and a peanut butter chocolate chip mini-cupcake from the same baker (or group of bakers at this one table). And it was neat to see the variety and the creativity put into making them all.

I also tried a filled Hostess-style cupcake which was good, though extremely sweet.

Thing is, if you tell a whole city of people that there will be free cupcakes if you just show up at this place on a Sunday afternoon, there will be cupcake chaos.

It was insanely crowded! There was a kind of system: there was a set schedule posted of which cupcakes would be at which tables inside the venue, with each table changing bakers every 15 minutes. And every person was allowed to eat five cupcakes, so the bakers would mark on our tickets when we'd go up to get a cupcake. But there were so many people there, there was never not a line in front of each table, and if you wanted to wait in another line, you had to squeeeeze through the throng of patiently waiting cupcake lovers (and general fans of free treats) and hope you there would be enough cupcakes for everyone in line.

I'm glad I went, though next year I'm showing up with a team of people so we can divide, conquer and take bites of each others' cupcakes. I might also put on some of those football player shoulder pads.

Cupcakes and Muffins: Kissing Cousins

My friend Nancy (creator and editor of the excellent sandwich blog Between the Bread) recently sent me this photo of a muffin I baked and gave her one morning soon after hearing that she'd gotten engaged. Mostly I wanted to just post this photo because I think it's cute, despite the fact that it's a muffin and not a cupcake. But then I started thinking . . . what's the difference between muffins and cupcakes?

It might seem like an obvious distinction to some people — cupcakes have frosting, muffins do not. However! In the above photo, a lemon poppy-seed muffin has been drizzled with a sugary glaze. It's maybe not frosting, per se, but it is a kind of icing.

In doing some cursory Internet research on the subject, it appears that in addition to the "frosting vs. no frosting" debate, many folks also point out that muffins are cups of baked bread and are intended as a breakfast food, while cupcakes are far sweeter and are used as desserts. And yet, over on the blog Cake Spy, they conducted a whole experiment about this question and found that the recipes they used for the cupcakes and the muffins each called for the same amount of sugar! That is, however, only in the cupcakes themselves and doesn't count the sugar in frosting.

The editors at Cupcakes Take the Cake decided that it wasn't the amount of sugar but rather the ratios of fat, sugar and eggs:

The quick-and-dirty answer on this is that cupcakes have frosting, whereas muffins do not. However, in researching, I found an excellent formulaic definition of the difference courtesy of Diana's Desserts: "A basic formula for muffins is 2 cups flour, 2-4 tablespoons sugar, 2½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 egg, ¼ cup oil, shortening or butter and 1 cup milk. When the fat, sugar and egg ratio in a recipe reaches double or more than this, you have reached the cake level."

I know which one I'd prefer on any given day, but which do you enjoy more: Cupcakes or muffins?

"Fall"-ing in Love With Pumpkin-Ginger Cupcakes

Obviously, birthdays are always reason to celebrate, but they especially fill me with specific kind of glee: Yay, legitimate reason for cupcakes! When my friend Katie told me that her husband's birthday would fall during their visit to northern California this past weekend, I was off the phone and planning cupcakes in no time. I fussed with my cupcake books for a while, pondering which recipe to choose. Basic chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting? Elaborate-looking cupcakes with aliens built from doughnut holes and dipped in frosting the color of Ecto-Cooler?

Ultimately, I just looked outside for inspiration. Even here in San Francisco the air has a crisp bite to it, though the sky remains a brilliant clear blue — it's definitely autumn. Thus, for Dave's birthday, I chose something autumn-appropriate: pumpkin-ginger cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

The recipe called for crystalized ginger to be chopped up into tiny bits and added to the batter (which featured real pumpkin — yum).

I'd never worked with crystalized ginger before, and it really does add a spicy kick to the cupcake when you get a bite with a little nugget of pure ginger.

The cupcakes filled my apartment with that rich pumpkins-n-cinnamon aroma that calls up memories of Thanksgiving and Home. They came out a nice light orange-brown color.

Finally, I set aside part of the frosting, added some milk and a whole lot of cinnamon to color it brown, and piped the darker frosting in circles on top of the white coating. Then I pulled a toothpick down from the center to the edges, curving the brown circles into a "spiderweb" design. They didn't look exactly like the photos in the cookbook, but I was pretty proud of my delicious pumpkin-y spiderweb cupcakes nonetheless.

Happy 31st, Dave-o!!

So Sweet: The Very Hungry Caterpillar o' Cupcakes

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while:

I used to love those books by Eric Carle, too.

It's amazing to me when cupcakes are used so artfully. This photo comes from the flickr uploads by coco cake cupcakes, and there are plenty more adorable, delightful cupcakecreations where this one came from.

A Beautiful Sight

Though this came out of the same night as the "angels and demons" cupcakes, I figured this photo deserves its own post.

How beautiful is this? Devil's food cupcake with sea salt caramel filling and a glass of California Bubble Works' sparkling Cabernet Sauvignon. Awesome.

Angels and Demons

There was no new episode of Top Chef this week (boooo!) but they did re-air the episode from last week in which the "cheftestants" had a quickfire challenge having to do with the little angels and little devils that sit upon everyone's shoulders. They were instructed to create a dish reflecting their interpretations of these dichotomous sides of the conscience. Personally, I thought this challenge wasn't that different from an earlier one this season in which they had to create a dish inspired by their own personal vices (they love to use this Las Vegas theme — sins, addictions, devils), but it was still interesting to see what the chefs came up with.

And I decided to do my own cupcake version of the challenge! Now, I have to preempt this all by noting that I rarely use boxed cake mixes for my cupcakes (and I rarely use packaged frosting, too), but in the interest of time for this one, I did end up collaborating with good old Duncan and Betty.

I also went with the most obvious interpretation of "angel and devil" with angel's food cake and devil's food cake. But! I did add a devilishly tangy component of my own (and made from scratch) to make the chocolately devil's cupcakes that much more diabolical: a sea-salt caramel filling.

You can probably guess which of these cupcakes I prefer. But it was interesting to make both of them. I've actually never baked angel's food cake, and using cupcake tins produced some fascinating results. For one thing, the instructions were to not coat the pans before baking, and the cupcakes stuck to them!

Once I got them out and tasted them, they were chewy and tasted much like toasted marshmallows.

The middle part was that light, airy white cake that pairs so perfectly with fruit and cream, though. Thus, my angel:

As for the little devils, I made my first homemade caramel from a recipe I received in my cupcake class a few months ago. It's so simple! You just boil a bunch of sugar in water for a while, add some heavy cream, butter, lemon juice and sea salt and voilà!

Okay, admittedly, I think I left the sugar boiling for a few seconds too long and the caramel was slightly burnt-tasting. At the same time, it kind of works for this particular recipe — the salty tanginess is just a little sharper than normal. My friend Reed, fellow Top Chef (and Glee) fan and courageous cupcake taster, generously called the caramel "smokey," which is actually even more in keeping with the demonic/fiery hell theme of the "devil's" cupcakes. So I'm going to go with that. :)