With Valentine’s Day coming up, you should certainly consider making these delicious vanilla valentine’s day vegan cupcakes! I snagged the recipe from the Edgy Veg, but I did want to share my experience and one major thing she did not mention in her video or in the recipe.
So she does indeed go over the fact that most food coloring is NOT vegan and is actually made from bug or beetle shells, gross! So for this recipe we actually make our own food coloring from beets! So cool.
One thing I did want to note was that she didn’t mention anything about sugar, especially powdered sugar, not being vegan. A lot of the time sugar is made from refined bone char! Factories will take all the bone, hoofs, and other nasty stuff, grind it all up to use in sugar. It’s pretty disgusting, so that’s why you always need to find organic cane sugar when buying sugar as a vegan. It never ceases to amaze me all the ways humans ruin a good thing with animal by-products.
So for this recipe I did some research and found that you can either A) buy organic powdered sugar or B) MAKE YOUR OWN!
Since the recipe already called for cane sugar, I found out that you can blend 1 cup of cane sugar and 1 TBSP of cornstarch to create your own powdered sugar. I did it and it really works! How neat is that?!
Anyway, here’s the recipe and if you end up making these, please let me know!
Be sure to watch my Youtube video on me making them so you can see what NOT to do when making the frosting. :’) Have a vegan (Valentine’s) day!!
Homemade Vegan Food Coloring
Ingredients:
1 Small Beet
Instructions:
1. Peel, trim and chop 1 small beet.
2. Add to a blender with 1 tbsp water and blend until you have a pulp
3. Strain the beet puree, using a fine mesh strainer
Pink Vanilla Valentine’s Day Cupcakes
Ingredients:
1 cup unsweetened soy milk
1 ½ tsp apple cider vinegar
1¼ cups unbleached all purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp sea salt
½ cup organic granulated cane sugar
¼ cup vegan butter, softened
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
Drops of beet food colouring (see recipe above)
Cream cheese frosting (see recipe below)
Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together soy milk and apple cider vinegar. Set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
5. In a separate bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together sugar, vegan butter and coconut oil until well combined.
6. Beat in the vanilla extract and soy milk until well combined.
7. Now, slowly beat in the flour mixture until well combined.
8. Beat in drops of beet juice coloring, one drop at a time, until you reach your desired shade of pink.
9. Using ¼ cup measuring cup, scoop cake batter into the cupcake liners, and fill them ⅔ of the way full.
10. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.
11. Remove cupcakes from the oven and let them cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.
Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
1 cup vegan cream cheese, cold
¾ cup vegan butter, softened
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted (roughly)
zest of one lemon
beet juice food dye, if using (recipe above)
1. In a medium mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and vegan butter until smooth.
2. Add the vanilla extract, and powdered sugar until smooth.
3. Add lemon zest and drops of beet food dye and beat on high until light and fluffy.
4. Add additional powdered sugar as needed to make a light and fluffy frosting.
5. Pipe or dollop onto cooled cupcakes and decorate as desired.