for-starters

f o r - s t a r t e r s . . .
I first made these cakes for a friend's birthday. Her flatmate is vegan and I thought it would be nice if she could eat cake...everybody should get to eat cake on birthdays!

The recipe came from a combination of a vegan recipe book I'd seen in the library and a youtube clip!

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with some soya milk and some vegan chocolate icing

Vegan chocolate cupcakes

240 ml soya milk; 1 tbsp vinegar; 150g granulated sugar; 80ml vegetable oil; 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract; ½ tsp orange extract; 140g flour; 45g cocoa; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda.

Whisk soya milk & vinegar in bowl and allow it to curdle a little.  Add sugar, oil and extract to soya milk and whisk until it's all foamy on top. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa & bicarb. Add the dry mix into the liquid mix in two batches & beat until there are no large lumps.
Pour mix into cake cases & bake for 18 mins at 180C/Gas Mark 4.

It's really easy to make these cakes and they taste delicious. I think it tastes a bit different to a regular chocolate cake and it's definitely lighter...maybe not very 'structurally sound' if you're making a bigger cake and trying to cut it though.
You can safely lick the mixing spoon clean but there is sometimes a slight taste of vinegar (this definitely disappears during cooking)!