I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, but not because I haven’t been working on my blog – I’ve just been doing a lot of work in the background.  I realized I had a lot of housekeeping to do as well as cleaning up some of my earlier posts to make the recipes easier to follow – I’m almost finished cleaning up all my posts, so you should very easily be able to follow the recipes I’ve posted.

Now onto the real matter at hand – cupcakes.  I was already a fan of the Food Network show Cupcake Wars, but when they added vegan contestants to the mix, I was hooked!  I still find it quite annoying though that most cupcakes shops continue to leave out a vegan option on their menu.  Sprinkles finally has a vegan red velvet cupcake, but other bakeries in my area, such as Kara’s still don’t (bizarre).

The most exciting episode of Cupcake Wars was the one where Chloe Coscarelli won the contest – take that non-vegan cupcakes!  Ever since then, I have been meaning to try out the recipes that these fantastic chefs competed with (ya, I know…real vegan bloggers were probably all over this months ago!).  Kim Garr of C’est La V Bakeshop did not win during her episode, but did post all the recipes she was intending on using on her blog.

This week, I decided to recreate two of Kim Garr’s cupcakes – the first time I tried out this recipe was with my guest blogger, Amandeep.  There are two reasons why I decided to remake the same cupcakes – the first being that I wasn’t blogging yet when we made these cupcakes, and the second reason being that I was only on decoration duty during our first attempt – Amandeep did all the baking last time.

The first cupcake I made was Kim Garr’s Jelly Donut and Coffee cupcake – a delicious white cupcake with a jelly filling and a coffee frosting.  The nutmeg and cinnamon in this cupcake really shines through and balances the sweetness from the jelly and frosting.  I pretty much followed the recipe as directed with the exception of the evaporated cane juice (I just used regular sugar because that is all I had available) and the instant coffee (I brewed a very strong cup of regular coffee instead).

The second cupcake I made was also from Kim Garr’s website – Midnight Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake.  I didn’t have the black cocoa powder, so just used more of the regular cocoa powder and the same thing again with the evaporated cane juice. This cupcake was pure heaven, although I had a hard time picking a favourite (and honestly, who needs to pick a favourite when you can just have one of each).

Here’s links to the other vegan cupcake wars recipes that are still on my to-do list:

1. Kim Garr’s third cupcake war entry – Grasshopper Cupcake
2. Chloe Coscarelli’s Creme-filled Chocolate Orange Cupcake

If you want another great source of veganized recipes, check out www.vegansaurus.com for their Veganizing Top Chef: Just Desserts series.  This bundt cake by Terry Hope Romero is one my favourites!