Another baking-intensive weekend



As alluded to previously, I ended up bringing cupcakes to last night's Hallowe'en gathering. I thought it'd be fun to play into the theme by bringing pumpkin cupcakes with vegan cream cheese icing. I also decided to make up a batch of chocolate cupcakes — also with cream cheese icing — to ensure that everyone who wanted a cupcake got to have one.

The recipes I used are — unsurprisingly — from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The only recipe I didn't follow faithfully was the pumpkin version. Their recipe suggests adding chocolate chips to the batter, but the idea of chocolate chips with pumpkin doesn't really appeal to me. I also added some freshly-grated nutmeg to the batter.

Also, I was able to ice these a little more prettily than I have been by using my recently-acquired Ateco pastry tip in size 809 and piping bag. I'm going to have to buy another piping bag for my smaller, standard-size tips, but I think I've gotten the hang of using the larger one!

More cupcake adventures!

Sadly, the batch of vegan Golden Vanilla Cupcakes I made today aren't very photogenic. I think that my vegan margarine was still too cold when I started beating it with the sugar. As a result, they sank after coming out of the oven.

That said, they taste incredible. Much nomming has been — and will be — had.

Busy weekend for our oven



I meant to get around to doing paint touch-ups around the house today, but those plans were backburned when I realized that we were almost out of bread on a statutory holiday Monday. The allure of fresh-baked bread was just too strong to ignore.

The recipe I based this on is one which I've blogged about previously. As per my last batch of homemade bread (made over a year and a half ago!), I used a 1:1 ratio of organic, unbleached white flour to whole wheat "hard"/bread flour. I accidentally omitted the shortening called for in the recipe, so this bread is noticeably drier than my previous attempts, but it's still really good!

Looks like Kara and I will have toast and eggs tomorrow morning.

Good news for those who will be at the same Hallowe'en party as I



These turned out really nicely. That wasn't a surprise, given how fantastically the other two recipes I've taken from my cupcake reference book have turned out.


This — while it may not look terribly appetizing right now — also turned out damn well. I'd heard mixed reviews about this recipe, so I'm happy that it's a success.

The only thing I'm disappointed about is that there will be an even six people at Thanksgiving dinner tonight — allowing for two cupcakes per person. I can't "sample" these before we go!