Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

My wonderful, crazy roommate has decided to become a vegan. She has also been working until nearly midnight the past few days. So I decided late last night to throw together a vegan cupcake recipe she'd come across on a vegan food blog (ohsheglows). I thought it might make coming home past midnight a bit more bearable. I wasn't expecting all that much - vegan desserts, at least in my (admittedly limited) experience, tend to be on the dry, somewhat tasteless side. But these cupcakes, besides being surprisingly easy (vegan desserts also tend to have a million, difficult-to-find ingredients) are delicious. The cupcakes are light and fluffy, and their rich, chocolate flavor goes wonderfully with the creamy vanilla buttercream.  Minus the soy milk and the earth balance 'butter' in the frosting, nothing about these cupcakes is particularly vegan.  I'd make them again in a second, vegan or not.

I topped them with raspberries (the acidity is a great contrast to the sweetness), but you can also mush up a couple raspberries into the frosting for a bit more tang (and a super pretty pink color). As a side note, these are actually impressively healthy as cupcakes go, considering the complete lack of butter. I altered the original recipe, which calls for almond extract in both the cupcakes and the frosting. Enjoy!

 

Ingredients: 

Cupcakes:
1 cup soy milk
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder (I use hershey's special dark)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Frosting:
5 tbsp Earth Balance buttery stick or equivalent, room temperature
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 tbsp soy milk

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Grease a 12-cup muffin tin
Combine wet ingredients (through vanilla) and stir till smooth
Sift in dry ingredients (through salt)
Spoon batter into tins and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until
cake springs slowly back when pressed with a finger

While cupcakes are cooling, beat butter, sugar, vanilla and milk for frosting
When cupcakes are 100% cool, frost, and top with raspberries

12 cupcakes