These came as a request from a known Vermont-o-phile, my mom. But they worked equally well on Canadians and friends who just love a delicious cupcake and aren’t allergic to walnuts. Isa & Terry include a recipe for sugaring the walnuts that then get folded into the batter, a step you can freely skip if you’re short on maple syrup – which I was by my second batch of these. But if you’ve got the time, the ingredients, and the fortitude, I highly recommend going all the way: the sugared walnuts definitely add something special to the mix. Perhaps it’s the cinnamon. Either way, the nutmeg in these gives a pleasant “little kick to them,” which is a fun phrase to debate the meaning of while you eat these and play Dungeons and Dragons.
Isa & Terry include a recipe for Creamy Maple Frosting (69), which calls for soy milk powder. Soy milk powder might be tricky to find at your local grocer’s, but you can get it online, at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe for example. But if you live off the grid and you don’t want mail carriers nosing around your compound while you’re trying to make cupcakes, then you can do like me and improvise: I used the Fluffy Buttercream recipe (142), substituting maple syrup for the soy milk and maple extract for the vanilla. Worked out just fine, and I had plenty of frosting for two batches of cupcakes. I’ll probably order from Cosmo’s in the future anyway, because they aren’t just a vegan shop, they are a vegan shopPE.
