Vegan baking can be a bit of a minefield. When you remove the conventional eggs, sugar and milk from a cake mixture, you can end up with a right mess. I won't lie, there have been several times that I've attempted to bake a vegan cake and I've ended up with a thick, tasteless catastrophe. However that is certainly not the case with these chocolate cupcakes! These bad boys are incredibly light and fluffy, full of chocolate flavour, very easy to make and, absolutely delicious.
I decided to set myself an additional challenge when making these - they had to be refined sugar free. I try and keep all types of refined and processed food in my diet to a tight limit, but refined sugar is the one thing I try to limit the most. Sugar is absolutely everywhere these days meaning that it is extremely hard to avoid. However there are more than a few types of completely natural sugar, which means it isn't difficult to keep my sweet tooth happy!
Ingredients;
The Cupcakes
100gm vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)
1/2 cup raw coconut sugar
1 1/2 cups wholemeal spelt flour
2 heaped tbsp raw cacao powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup unsweetened plant milk (I like to use almond or coconut)
1. Preheat a fan forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat the vegan butter and coconut sugar with an electric mixer until it is light and fluffy.
3. Add in the spelt four, cacao, baking soda and plant milk and mix using an electric mixer unit everything is really well combined.
4. Take a muffin tin and line it with patty cases. Fill each case with the muffin mixture. (I wanted mine to rise quite a lot, so I filled them to the rim, but this will just depend on how big you want the cupcakes to be!)
5. Bake for approx. 25 minutes When cooked, a skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean.
6. Allow to cool while you make the icing.
The Icing
1 ripe avocado
2 tbsp raw cacao powder
3 tbsp pure maple syrup (agave also works)
1 tbsp plant milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)
1. Halve the avocado and scoop the insides out into a blender with a spoon. Add in the cacao, maple syrup and plant milk. Blend until well combined, makings sure to scrape the sides down.
2. Use a spoon to scoop the icing mixture into a piping bag and pipe it onto the cooled cupcakes. Alternatively you could just spread it straight onto the cupcakes with a knife. I garnished mine with some crushed pistachio nuts and dairy free choc chips.
3. When iced, place in the fridge for half an hour to allow the icing to firm up. Store them in the fridge (that is if you don't eat them all straight up!)
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