My first Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes

I did it! I did my first Vegan baking on Friday night. It's Vanilla Soymilk Cupcakes. Totally vegan. Not that I'm a vegan but I've always been curious about vegan cakes. How good could they get without the eggs?

Here is the recipe I did.

Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup soymilk (I actually used sweetened commercial soymilk in a bottle)
1/2 tbs sugar cane vinegar (you may use any type of clear vinegar I think)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (all I had was cheap palm cooking oil)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. I like to use a whisk here.
2. Pour the vinegar into the soymilk, stir a little to mix it and let it curdle.
3. Pour the oil into the soymilk mixture and stir well.
4. While still stirring the soymilk/oil mixture, pour it into the dry mixture.
5. Carefully mix it all together till there is no lump.
(I am scared of over-mixing because of previous gluten disaster cake batter)
6. Fill up your cupcake liners of choice.
7. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 deg C or 340 deg F for about 15 mins.

I managed to yield 9 cupcakes on a Standard-size Cupcake liners. About 3 1/4 oz size.

The texture is pretty fluffy for an eggless cuppie.
It will never be a sponge cake but not as dense and heavy as I expected it to be.

How did it turn out?

1. The milk thing

I think the kind of milk you use will affect how this cupcake will taste. My cupcake tasted like soymilk. I know some vegans avoid any soy which I will never understand why. It's one of my favourite drinks since I was a kid along with chrysanthemum tea, sugar cane juice, lychee, grass jelly. I haven't yet tasted almond milk or rice milk but I'm sure what those taste would greatly define the final cupcakes if you want to eat unfrosted.

2. Light sweet tooth

There is something that feels really light about this. There is no rich taste of the normal recipe with eggs and cow's milk. The egg and dairy cakes are rich and delicious but to an average person, after 2 or 3 cupcakes, you have to stop. It gets too much. With this vegan cupcake, I found myself easily putting 4 cupcakes into my mouth and not feeling this was too much. They were like sweet bread to my tongue. Meaning it will be much easier to pair this cupcake with any frosting you want.

3. Texture and all

What happened when I tried to peel off the cupcake liner right after baking.
The cake got peeled off too. Ha..ha!

Look at the cake ending up on the liner!
The cake is moist. Very moist. The oil and soymilk must have done it good :-)

4. Better after they cooled down in a few hours or the next day.

This is the cupcake the day after.
The cake did not come off like it did when peeled off hot.

The inner texture. Better than some of my non-vegan cupcakes.

I think I have made something non-vegan similar to this .
If I can achieve the same result minus the eggs, then I think I would rather go for the Vegan version. More convenient and less calories.


It looked and tasted better the next day. Soft and moist.

5. Why vegan baking appeals to me?

Eggs are tricky to keep fresh if you don't have a fridge. I would rather fill up my mini fridge with fruits. Butter is too expensive and also take up space in the fridge but we have plenty of cooking oil in stock everyday. I haven't yet tried things like Canola Oil and the likes but other than Peanut Oil , I think most oils are pretty much tasteless.

6. Would I make them again?

YES! Definitely.