Vegan Maple Cupcake with Creamy Maple Frosting

My lovely husband noticed i left 'Vegan cupcakes take over the world' open on the computer for a few days as i was having an internal struggle on whether to buy it or not so as a surprise he bought it for me :-) Top husband points!

Once it arrived one of the first recipes i noticed inside was Maple Cupcakes with Creamy Maple Frosting and Sugared Almonds! Nothing else appealed to me as much as the thought of maple flavored cupcakes i remember as a child whenever asked what my favorite food was i used to answer "Maple Syrup", always asking at Mcdonalds for an extra maple syrup just so i could drink it out of the little tub. haha. So off i go to make my first real vegan food and the result was rather delicious.

 - The Recipe - 

*Sugared Almonds*


1 cup of Almond halves
1/3 cup of Granulated sugar
3 tbsp of Maple syrup
Dash of Salt
Dash of Ground cinnamon

• Toast the Almonds on a baking tray in the oven at 275F or 135C for about 8 minutes then shake the tray and toast for a further 4 minutes
• Then on Med heat on the stove combine the sugar, maple syrup and salt after about 5 minutes the sugar should start to melt and bubble, cook for another 3-4 minutes until it is thick and amber brown and smells like caramel.
• Remove from heat stir in Almonds and cinnamon, quickly spread out on some baking paper spreading it out to avoid clumps of nuts.

*Cupcakes*

1/2 cup of Soy milk

1/2 tsp of apple cider vinegar
1 & 1/3 cups of all purpose flower
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup canola oil
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 & 1/4 tsp maple extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugared walnuts from recipe (measure first then chop)

• Preheat oven to 350F or 180C and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners
• Whisk soy milk and vinegar in a separate bowl and set aside
• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg into a separate bowl and form a well.
• Whisk syrup, oil, brown sugar and vanilla and maple extract into the soy mixture.
• Pour wet ingredients into well of dry ingredients and stir still large lumps are gone.
• fold in chopped walnuts
• fill cupcake liners 2/3 of the way and bake for 20-22minutes, transfer to cooling racks to cool completely then follow with frosting
  

*Creamy Maple Frosting*

2/3 cup Maple syrup

3/4 cup Margarine

2/3 cup Soy milk powder

1 tsp Maple extract

1 tsp Vanilla extract

• Beat the maple syrup and margarine then the vanilla and maple extract
• slowly add soy milk powder a little bit at a time
• Lather onto the cooled cupcakes!

 - My Review -

The cupcakes were very yummy and i was pleasantly surprised at how no one could possibly tell it was vegan which is giving me many ideas for my daughters up coming 1st birthday, i've never used nutmeg but the tiny hint of it in these cupcakes made all the difference. I tested the cupcakes on a range of people and they all came back with positive reviews and the same conclusion as me about the sugared almonds (read ahead). I could not be entirely sure how honest they were though as i'm a rather useless cook and my excitement over my cupcakes and my hovering over their shoulder watching every bite could of influenced them to agree about their yumminess without that being their actual opinion. :-/ i guess we'll never know.

I could not find maple extract anywhere so just substituted it with vanilla extract so my final result was probably not as maply as it should have been but it didn't make it any more vanillery either. I could also not find soy milk powder so my frosting was virtually maple syrup and margarine, as i was testing and tasting the frosting all i could taste was a mouthful of margarine and tbh it was quite sickening and i was rather disappointed, however once i applied it to the cupcakes it took on a whole new taste and worked well with the cupcake as it no longer had the margarine strong taste and just tasted like a bit of maple type frosting although the measurements for frosting i actually spread over 2 batches of cupcakes. The almonds are hands down the best thing about these cupcakes! That doesn't say anything bad about the cupcakes just amazing things about the almonds, although i struggled to get the proper crunchy toffee around the almonds as i never dissolved the sugar enough before spreading it all over the paper didn't seem to do any harm because the end result was so delicious, i have found a new sugary snack to take with me to the movie cinemas in fact they were so delicious that even though you are suppose to use half the mixture to dice and put in the cupcakes and the other half to garnish i used 1 half to garnish and ate the entire other half.

1.  - Things I Learnt - 

An entire bottle of maple syrup can be used in one Recipe.

I was completely in the dark about which sugar is Granulated sugar, so i asked my husband who said it's the chunky one (raw sugar). I'm not sure why i asked him as i don't think the man has ever baked anything that contained sugar a day in his life. However after struggling greatly to get it to dissolve in the sugared almonds i did a quick google and discovered it's the finer sugar. Not as fine as caster sugar but more the one up from that just traditional old white sugar.

Bi-carb Soda IS baking soda which IS NOT baking powder. This had me running around in circles in the super market for quite some time.

<3