cupcakes

I have been having a major food crisis these past months; I have developed an intolerance to soy, so it’s no more soy milk or soy yogurts for me. I’m still eating some tofu and tempeh, but I don’t know for how long I can keep on eating them, I had to give up soy isolates some time ago, so this has been getting worse and I am preparing myself for a soy-free life; it will be hard giving up something that has been a staple in your diet for such a long time. This means that at the moment I can’t eat anything starchy including potatoes and white rice, oats, anything with gluten, any raw vegetables, margarine and soy. That’s a long list and I came to the conclusion that I will start eating some eggs and milk products from now on. Since this blog reflects my life, I will start including recipes with milk and eggs from this day forward.

It feels odd thinking about milk and eggs as food again; my milk- and egg-free life lasted for about ten years and so this still feels strange. Many celiacs seem to develop other kind of food problems and some autoimmune diseases and it seems I am one of them, I hope that eating as much organic foods as possible and avoiding refined foods will somehow prevent other allergies from raising their head.

I made some carrot cupcakes with eggs and they do turn out different than egg-free ones; the texture is somewhat harder and gummier, egg-free cupcakes are really soft and moist. The liquid in these comes from carrots boiled in orange juice which has then been puréed and pressed through a fine mesh. For the decoration I used some caramelized carrots which tasted really good and the frosting was made with cream cheese.

Carrot cupcakes

Makes 12 small cupcakes

-3/4 cup caster sugar

-3/4 cup butter

-3 eggs

-2 carrots

-3 cups orange juice

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-2 tsp baking powder

-1 1/2 cups flour, I used quinoa flour

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Grate the carrots and put them into a saucepan on medium heat and add the orange juice. When the carrots are done purée them and then press them through a fine mesh, take 2/3 cup of the liquid and set aside.

Beat the sugar and the butter until creamy. Add the eggs and then add the orange juice and carrot mixture (2/3 cup), add the vanilla extract too and mix everything together. Sift the flour and the baking powder and fold them into the batter. Spoon the batter into cupcake papers, leave some room for it to rise.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

The frosting

-400 grams cream cheese (tofutti makes a great soy based cream cheese which is milk-free)

-1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar

-1 tbls orange juice

Mix everything together and frost the cupcakes after they have cooled down.

Caramelized carrot slices

-2 carrots, slice them with a peeler so that you get nice long slices

-3 heaping tbls butter

-1/2 cup sugar

Place the sugar and the butter in a saucepan on medium heat, wait until they turn into a smooth paste, it should be a bit brown and everything should have dissolved. Add the carrot slices and quickly turn them around in the saucepan so that are coated, put them onto some kitchen paper and let them cool before decorating with them.

On a side note, I tried using quinoa flour in a roux and it worked, I was a bit suprised. I was making some qumbo and not béchamel, so I don’t know how it will behave in something like béchamel sauce.

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I love, love saffron; it goes with everything, bread, cakes, stews, soups - I can not think of many things which would not be enhanced with a bit of saffron. There is something soothing about the flavour of saffron and you can´t talk about this spice without the mention of the golden yellow colour it gives to foods; the colour is indeed something magnificent, pure gold.

Saffron also has some medicinal qualities, the value of this spice is just not in the taste, it has been proven to have anticarcinogenic and antioxidant-like qualities, but who cares about that when the taste is what it is; nearly perfect.

I´ve made these saffron cupcakes two times, actually three times, but I did do two batches the second time around, just to test two different recipes. The first time around I used a regular butter cream frosting and it was good all in all, I got a lot of compliments and no one noticed they were gluten-free, at least no one said anything, you never know though. Despite everyone liking them (including myself) I felt like I needed to add something to them, there was something missing in my opinion. My dad had made some saffron white chocolate truffles at Christmas and I got the idea to make a white chocolate frosting to these cupcakes; I was amazed at how these two tastes combined, these cupcakes were so good that I ate seven of them, yes seven (oh my), and got the worst sugar shock in years. I don´t know if it was worth it, but I could not help myself once I had tasted the combination of white chocolate and saffron.

I tested these with no-egg and then with vinegar, I thought that the ones with no-egg were better; they were fluffier and the taste was better. Quinoa flour was my choice of flour in these, it is almost always my number one choice in gluten-free baking, but I am sure these can easily be made with other flours. In Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World they use a mixture of almond flour, quinoa flour and white rice flour. I have a suspicion that it would be a great gluten-free flour mixture for baking, I have not tried it yet, but I will. We did make the regular chocolate cupcakes from the book with my sister and they ended up just perfect.

Remember to wait for the white chocolate to cool down a bit before mixing it with the frosting or you will end up with a frosting which looks like my frosting in the first picture - too liquid. Impatient as I am, I could not wait for it to cool down after melting it and I added it too soon, thus melting the coconut and margarine at the same time. It tasted good though.

Saffron Cupcake Recipe

This recipe makes approximately 12 cupcakes.

-3/4 cup margarine

-3/4 cup sugar

-3 tsp no-egg mixed with 3 tbls of water

-1/2 cup soy milk

-1 tsp baking powder

-1 1/2 cup flour, I used quinoa flour

-0,5 grams saffron

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Warm the milk and add the saffron, set aside.

Beat the margarine with the sugar on medium speed for a couple of minutes, then mix the liquid ingredients together and also mix the dry ingredients together. Add the liquid ingredients to the margarine and sugar mixture, beat them, then add the dry ingredients to the mixture, beat everything together until you have smooth thick paste, don´t beat the batter for too long.

If you want to you can add the liquid mixture alternately with the dry mixture to the sugar and margarine mixture, this will make your batter a bit fluffier. Add 1/3 of the liquid mixture, and then add 1/3 of the dry mixture etc. alternating until you have added all the ingredients.

Bake them for 20-30 min depending on your oven.

Saffron cupcake recipe without no-egg using vinegar

This was adapted from the book Vegan Cupcakes take over the world. Makes 12 cupcakes.

-1/2 cup margarine or 1/3 cup oil

-1/2 cup sugar

-1 cup soy milk

-1 tsp apple cider vinegar

-0,5 grams saffron

-1 tbls arrowroot

-1 tsp baking powder

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1 1/4 cups flour, I used quinoa flour

Preheat the oven to 170 Celsius.

Warm the milk; add the vinegar and saffron, set aside.

If you are using margarine beat it with the sugar on medium speed so that it becomes fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Mix together the dry ingredients. Start adding the dry and liquid ingredients to the mixture alternating until you have mixed everything together.

If you are using oil mix the dry ingredients together and add them to the liquid ingredients, mix everything together. I have not tried this recipe using oil, so I don´t know how this will end up.

White chocolate butter cream

-1/2 cup coconut oil

-1/2 cup margarine

-2 cups confectioner´s sugar (make sure this is gluten-free)

-100 grams milk-free white chocolate

Make sure all your ingredients are room temperature before beginning.

Beat the sugar, margarine and coconut oil on medium speed for at least a couple of minutes. Melt the white chocolate, let it cool and then add it to the buttercream.

Frost the cupcakes.

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