"Wood You Be Mine" Faux Wood Coffee Chocolate Cupcakes!

In spite of this month's Iron Cupcake contest (themed coffee), I made these jewels the other day and went a little crazy. Of course, I always rely on the ever faithful VCTOTW cookbook and made another variation on the theme of their amazing chocolate cupcake recipe. They weren't as coffee-flavored as I probably would have liked them, and I incorporated freshly ground coffee into the batter that wasn't completely uniformly ground. I kept biting into bigger pieces of coffee when eating one and it wasn't the most pleasant experience, but still tasted good nevertheless. This one was kind of a hard one for me to come up with... I didn't really know what would pair well with coffee. So I didn't get to crazy or fancy over the ingredients. Just basic chocolate, hazelnut flavored coffee, and a little Kahlua and coffee in the frosting.

Now here's where I got REALLY crazy. I'd been wanting to do this for a while now: chocolate woodgrain faux bois. I'd been a little intimidated to do so since I'd never done anything as culinary advanced before in my life. But I said hell with it, you never know if you don't try! Plus this month's issue of Martha Stewart about cupcakes has instructions on how to do this, as well, and that gave me a little more motivation. I'd purchased a sheet of plastic from a baker online a few months ago that already had the chocolate woodgrain pattern laid out and ready to go, so I skipped the step that would have normally called for dipping a wood graining tool into chocolate and rolling it out on the plastic. All I had to do was melt a few squares of white chocolate (which I have never really been a fan of until I made this and I really like it now...) and spread it over the brown woodsy pattern. A few times of transferring it in and out of the freezer to make the chocolate set and then cutting out the circles with a 2 1/4" biscuit cutter, and they were good to go! A lot of them were so delicate that about half of them broke. But it's all good. They turned out impressively well, if you ask me. I was pretty darn stoked. My goal at some point is to do it all over on a cake!








Hazelnut Coffee Chocolate Cupcakes with Kahlua Coffee Buttercream

Adapted from VCTOTW

Cupcakes:

1 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon chocolate

1 cup all -purpose flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons freshly ground coffee

Preheat oven to 350 F and line muffin pan with paper liners.

Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract, and other extract, to the soy milk mixture and beat till foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat till no large lumps remain.

Pour into liners, filling 3/4ths of the way. Bake 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated shortening

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated margarine

2 cups confectioners' sugar

1 teaspoon Kahlua

1-2 teaspoons coffee (depends on consistency--you may need to thin or thicken it with coffee/ sugar)

Beat together the shortening and margarine until well combined. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add Kahlua and coffee and beat for a few more minutes until you achieve a nice, thick consistency.

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For the Iron Cupcake contest, I am competing to win:

DIANAEVANS - as well as a pair of cupcake earrings from LOTS OF SPRINKLES.
PLUS, IronCupcake:Earth can not forget our good friend, CAKESPY, who is now going to be doing a piece for our winner each month until further notice - sweet!
As an added bonus for February, SWEET CUPPIN CAKES BAKERY AND CUPCAKERY SUPPLY will be tossing in a variety of cupcaking supplies.

Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS, http://www.fiestaproducts.com, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers, http://www.1800flowers.com.

Voting begins Sunday, March 1 at 8PM and goes until Friday, March 6 at 12 noon. Thanks!

The BEST Vegan Banana Bread

As you all well know, sometimes it takes me a little while to post the latest recipes of things I've baked or created, or I just don't get around to posting anything at all. WELL! This is an exception. I baked this yesterday! Fast turnaround, I know. It's because I seriously cannot get over how tasty this banana bread is and want to share it with the whole wide world (err, web). If you're not a believer of vegan, this will surely make you one, I swear. At first I had my doubts about this recipe. "Lower Fat Banana Bread" with only 10 ingredients and barely any oil involved? Just the basics of what you need in any banana bread recipe, except this calls for one magical ingredient: APPLESAUCE! Applesauce is an amazing ingredient to substitute for oil. It gives such a great flavor and texture and no one will even know. Typically in the past I've turned to this recipe whenever I want to use ripe bananas (both recipes were created by the same person). Don't get me wrong, that one is great too. But this... this outbeats anything. It's almost like a borderline gingerbread, due to the dark, deep rich flavor of molasses. And I took a chance and replaced the regular sugar with sucanat and I think that made a major difference. I'm just now beginning to explore the bigger world of natural sugars and it's really exciting. And for my birthday, one of the great gifts I just received is Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Cooking" (thank you Colleen!) which focuses on using "alternative" unrefined sugars and oils and which ones are better for you and the planet. Next time I'll put a twist on it when I'm feeling more adventurous--peanut butter or chocolate chips, walnuts, pecans, or do a pistachio/cardamom type thing. Ok, so enough said. Bottom line: MAKE THIS BANANA BREAD.

Lower-Fat Banana Bread from Veganomicon

Makes one loaf

2 large or 3 small very ripe bananas

1/4 cup applesauce (I used cinnamon spiced)

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 cup sucanat sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup white whole wheat flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

In a large mixing bowl, mash the bananas really well. Add the sugar, applesauce, oil, and molasses, and whisk briskly to incorporate.

Sift in the flour, baking soda, spices, and salt. Use a wooden spoon to mix until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined. If you're using chocolate chips or nuts, fold them in here.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes (it took 50 for me). The top should be lightly browned and a knife inserted through the center should come out clean.

Remove from the oven and let cool!