Vegan Lemon Cupcakes

I was invited to a 40th birthday party last Saturday, at a location that is nothing like anything I've ever visited before.  My old school friend Zoe (the birthday girl in question) has lived in Sanford Walk in New Cross, south London for the past 9 years and has been vegan since her late teens.  Sanford Walk is the first purpose-built housing co-operative in the UK and is home to around 130 artists, students and others.  I met some very interesting people and a lot of the conversations I had during the course of the day were about food.  I would make the world's worst vegetarian as I just love meat too much but I found it really encouraging to see that there are vegetarians and vegans out there who really care about the quality of the food they eat and love cooking.  I was really impressed by the imaginative approach towards the vegan food that we ate (most of the credit should go to Zoe, Sue and Danny who were up at the crack of dawn shopping and cooking), which was delicious.  Of course, you can't have a birthday party without cake and we had a fantastic vegan chocolate fudge cake courtesy of Ruby Tuesday's Bakery - complete with candles of course - as the sun went down.  And I contributed a batch of Vegan Lemon Cupcakes.

Baking is all about the complex chemical reactions between the ingredients that cause the mixture to rise.  That's why it's important to weigh ingredients accurately and not just guess, which you can generally get away with in other forms of cooking.  The addition of eggs to a cake mixture are a crucial part of incorporating air into the mixture to ensure that it rises, so that the finished cake has that lovely light texture.  Obviously vegans don't eat eggs or products including eggs, so you have to find other ways of achieving this.  My personal favourite is to use Egg Replacer (Holland and Barrett stock a brand called Allergycare).  This is a powder made from soya flour which you add to the cake mixture along with the flour - 20g is the equivalent of 1 egg.  You will also need to add some sort of (non-dairy) liquid like soya milk or water - just a splash - to get the cake batter to the same soft dropping consistency that you associate with a traditional cake mixture.  Apparently you can use egg replacer along with soya milk to make vegan pancake batter, which I've not tried but I've been told works very well.

One of the slightly odd things I have noticed about vegan cake mixtures is the way they rise.  They DO rise and the finished texture is light and fluffy.  However, if there are any dents or bumps in the cake mixture, they stay there (you know how you sometimes make a slight hollow in the top of a sandwich cake mixture to stop it rising into a point?  Well, don't do it with its vegan equivalent!)!  I tried to capture this strange effect by making a groove in one of the cakes but I'm not sure how clear it comes across in the photos I took:

Before

After

I chose to use a sunflower-based non-dairy margarine just because I prefer the bland taste over soya margarine, which I find a bit unpleasantly oily but of course, if you have a preferred brand, use that.  A word of warning: I was so concerned about the lemon flavour not coming across strongly enough in the frosting that I added a bit too much lemon juice.  Be careful, as too much will cause the frosting to separate (which is why mine have that "cottage cheese" look in the finished photo).  If I was making these again, I'd probably use a lemon essence like this one, just to make sure they were nice and tangy.  Here's the recipe:

Cakes:
100g non-dairy margarine (I used Vitalite)
100g caster sugar
40g egg replacer
100g self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Lemon juice and water to adjust the consistency of the batter
(** You'll also need a 12-hole muffin tin and paper cases of a suitable size - fairy cake ones are too little, go for cupcake/muffin cases).

Frosting:
100g non-dairy margarine (Vitalite again)
150g sifted icing sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Tiny squeeze of lemon juice

1) Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 4/180 degrees C and line your muffin tin with papers.

2) Beat together the non-dairy marge and caster sugar until the mixture is pale, soft and fluffy (I always use my electric mixer to do this now).  Add the grated zest of one lemon, the egg replacer, the baking powder and around half the flour and beat them in thorougly. 

3) Using a large metal spoon, gently fold in the remaining flour until no lumps of flour are visible.  The consistency of the cake mixture will probably be a little too thick here, so fold in a little lemon juice, water or soya milk until you get a soft dropping consistency (not runny like pancake batter).

4) Divide the mixture between the paper cakes and bake for 20-25 minutes until the cakes are golden brown and spring back when pressed gently with a finger.  Leave them to cool on a wire rack whilst you make the frosting.

5) Beat the remaining marge until it's pale and fluffy, then gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar until you've got a soft, spreadable frosting.  Beat in the remaining lemon zest and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice.  Use to top your cupcakes and decorate them with whatever is pleasing to you (as long as it's edible and vegan).  I used edible rice paper cake toppers (of which there are THOUSANDS on Ebay - you could have any design from Justin Beiber to a Cocker Spaniel) but summer berries would work a treat.

I'm told that "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the definitive book on the subject so maybe I should check it out.