Lemon Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Sliced Strawberries

Day 12 of Vegan Mofo: This recipes makes me giddy. A veganized version of a lovely favorite. I was stumped as to a good birthday dessert for a very Italian co-worker whose 2 favorite desserts are Tiramisu and Lemon Cake. There are a few vegan Tiramisu recipes out there, but I really wasn't feeling up to that challenge considering I was also making a pasta dish for the potluck (sounds like overkill for a work lunch, but I always need to bring a vegan sweet and savory option for the sheer pleasure of demonstrating how feasible vegan eating is). All tangeants aside, I found a great source of inspiration on Epicurious who has a killer Lemon Buttermilk Cake recipe that is very eaily veganizable.

The crowd's reaction: "This is seriously vegan? Can I please have this recipe?" Yes and yes. The cupcakes turned out incredibly moist for what I think is probably 2 reasons. The applesauce adds a ton of moisture, and the extra tablespoon of cider vinegar makes the batter a little more wet than the original version. Regardless of the real reason, these are fabulous, light and vibrantly flavorful. The cake itself has a very subtle lemon flavor, but the frosting...oh the frosting. It could be eaten (and maybe was eaten) by itself. Tanti auguri e buon appetito!

Lemon Cupcakes with Sliced Strawberries
Makes: 24 cupcakes
Total prep time: 2 hours with cooling

For the Cupcakes
1 1/2 c. almond or soy milk + 1 T. cider vinegar
1 3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. Earth Balance, room temperature
2 T. grated lemon peel
3/4 c. applesauce
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
3 c.cake flour (or all purpose)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

For the Frosting
12 oz. Tofutti cream cheese, room temperature
2 T. Earth Balance, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
3-4 T. lemon juice
2 tsp finely grated lemon peel

1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced

* For a thicker frosting, use lemonade concentrate (thawed) and decrease the fresh lemon peel.

Directions
For the Cake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray and flour muffin tins/cupcake pans or spray the lined paper cups.

Whisk vinegar and almond/soy milk together in a small bowl. Set aside to curdle while you prepare the other ingredients. In a separate large bowl, beat the sugar, Earth Balance and lemon peel. Add applesauce and lemon juice and beat until well blended. In a third bowl, sift flour, baking soda and salt. Stir dry ingredients into wet mixture alternately with curdled milk until batter is smooth.
Divide batter among tins or cups. Bake until tester inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to racks and cool 30-45 minutes.

For the frosting: Beat Tofutti and Earth Balance in large bowl until completely blended. Gradually add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Beat in lemonade concentrate or lemon juice and lemon peel.

To assemble: Top each cupcake with 1-2 tablespoons of frosting and 2-3 slices of fresh strawberries.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

How do I express my love for peanut butter? I must have it everyday. I’ll spread on bread, corn thins, rice cakes, tortillas, ice cream, chocolate bars, celery, peanut butter…I must have it everyday. A day without peanut butter is a day you probably don’t want to talk to me. A day beginning with peanut butter is the day you want me as your best friend. Is it bad that even after I had a piece of chocolate after lunch yesterday, I still made enough room to have a couple of corn thins (they’re like rice cakes, but made with corn) with some peanut butter and cinnamon sugar walnuts on top? That’s right, I had more than one. I like other nut and seed butters: cashew, almond, and sunflower seed. And the peanut is hardly my favorite nut compare to: walnuts, cashews, and almonds. But for whatever reason, I find all other butters, regardless of their deliciousness or health benefits, inferior to the power of peanut butter.

For a 50th birthday party with a fellow believer in “a spoonful of peanut butter helps the medicine go down” who happens to also have an infatuation with M&Ms, a perfect hybrid cookie was in order. There are more healing powers in the chocolate-peanut butter combo than modern medicine can offer. That might be a bold statement, but I have found no better cure for cramps. Having never made peanut butter cookies before, I felt I had to do a lot of research, especially since I am partial to softer cookies despite peanut butter varieties having a crunchier reputation. Of course there is a happy place in between, and working with dense, fat-filled peanut butter, I figured the moisture content wouldn’t be a problem if I found a good recipe.

Another story of infidelity….how do I manage to stray from recipes so easily? I can’t commit. I know everyone has faults, I’m not exempt. And sometimes it’s not so much a fault as it is a certain lacking. I found a great recipe that needed some minor adjustments, and I am only recently becoming comfortable with making my own tweaks while baking. Baking is fickle and one gram off could put 30 cookies in the garbage. So I tread carefully. This outcome was very successful. I’ve already made them twice and have requests for more at work. I have found that you can’t skimp on the margarine- the taste won’t be affected, but the cookie will fall apart easily. This cookie dough isn’t one that can be spooned onto the cookies sheet – you have to clump it together with your hands and shape them like patties. Stir in the chocolate chips before you clump the dough together or you’ll be kneading it for a while to get them incorporated.

Soft and crisp at the same time with chocolate surprises in every bite. Spreading an extra teaspoon of peanut butter on top of a freshly baked cookie like I did is optional but a highly recommended enhancement.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 36 small cookies
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 ¾ c. Unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. Baking soda
¾ tsp. Salt

1 c. Brown sugar
¾ c. Smooth peanut butter
½ c. Earth or Smart Balance
2-3 T. Almond or soy milk
2 T. Vanilla Extract

1 c. Chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat the sugar, peanut butter and margarine together until smooth. Add almond/soy milk and vanilla and blend until well mixed. Add flour mixture and work with hands when it becomes too thick for your blender. Fold in chocolate chip, pressing firmly into dough.

Using 1 ½-2 tablespoons of dough per cookie, form dough into small discs. Press in 2 directions with the back of a fork for a crisscross pattern. Place on cookie sheet and bake in oven 7-8 minutes or until just golden on the edges. Be careful not to over bake. Remove from oven and let cool on pan to finish cooking. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Orange-Scented Cornmeal Cookies with Cranberry Icing

I facilitate a quarterly meeting with over a dozen people who take the time out of their day and remove themselves from a very busy operation to serve on a panel for an employee recognition program I run. Of course, I treat this meeting as though I were hosting a get together at my home; I bring in baked goods and set up a nice spread so they feel comfortable. Half of them fly in from the east coast on a 5+ hour plane ride for one day’s work, so the least I can do it make some homemade eats instead of leaving them with corporate coffee and Biscoff cookies (ok Biscoff cookies are really good, but they are still airplane food).

With a variety of personalities and tastes, I try to make several things across the board instead of aiming for just one general taste. You might think everyone likes oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but you never know (some very disturbed people don't). The last time this panel came, I made scones and chocolate-dipped biscotti which were  very well-received. So this time I went with the “Everything” cookie – everything including chocolate chips, pecans, oatmeal, and coconut - for the sweet portion. I also made vegan Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake, less sweet than the cookies but also very popular. Then for the not so sweet but great-with-coffee option, I chose Cornmeal Cookies. I found a general recipe on Epicurious.com that I just tweaked to make more flavorful and, oh yeah, vegan.

The texture of these was fantastic, with a soft shortbread give but a pleasant cornmeal crunch. The pink icing was popular not only because of its color, but because it added a faint sweetness without being overbearing. Adding a very sour juice with powdered sugar was a good strategy. The orange barely present, I may tweak the measurements a bit, but give it a shot and see what you think! I’m a lazy cookie baker and don’t like high hassle dough, which is why I almost always make drop cookies. Despite having to chill the dough and then go at it what a rolling pin, these were super easy to make. Perfect for dipping in coffee or tea.

Orange-Scented Cornmeal Cookies with Cranberry Icing
Makes about 30 cookies
Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes plus cooling

Ingredients

For the Cookies
1 c. Unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ c. Cornmeal (not corn grits or polenta)
½ tsp Salt
¼ tsp. Baking soda
7 T. Vegan margarine, room temperature
½ c. Sugar
¼ c. Applesauce
1 T. Orange Juice, freshly squeezed
1 tsp. Orange Zest
½ tsp. Vanilla extract

For the Icing
1 ½ c. Powdered sugar, sifted
2-3 T. Cranberry juice blend

Directions

Whisk together flour, cornmeal, salt and baking soda in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, beat margarine and sugar together until fluffy, scraping down mixture from the sides of the bowl. Beat in applesauce, orange juice, zest and vanilla. Reducing the speed, slowly add in dry ingredients, about ¾ cup at a time until just incorporated. Form dough into a ball and chill wrapped in plastic for 30 min.

Preheat oven to 350˚F.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough with a floured rolling pin into a large square, about 8 inches on each side. Make about 10 vertical slices in dough (about ¾ inch wide) and cut dough crosswise in thirds. Transfer to a cookie sheet about 15 minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack and cool, 30-45 minutes.

To make the icing, sift the powdered sugar into a mixing bowl and whisk in 2 T of cranberry juice. Add more for a thinner consistency. Using a spoon or spatula, drizzle icing over cooled cookies in any fashion of you preference. Let icing set while cookies are on cooling rack. Transfer to platter or container, separating layers with parchment or wax paper.