Hello, hello! Charlotte here. Hope your Halloween/Dias de los muertos were festive and fun, and just a little scary. I know my 31st of October was muy excellente, the reasons for which I can sum up in three words: vegan cupcake giveaway! Yes, there are few things that bring me greater joy than vegan food being made and distributed to the masses gratis. (Which means I conceptually adore Food Not Bombs, even though the DC chapter does their cooking and distributing when I’m working and/or elsewhere.) This Saturday, I decided to shake off a painful and frustrating Friday by getting back to one of my favorite activities, and then sharing the fruits of my labor with the world! Or, at least the first twenty or so strangers I could persuade to take a cupcake from the strange woman in the red wig. Let me ’splain:
Chipotle gives out free burritos on Halloween, to anyone who comes in dressed as a burrito. In practice this means wrapping some part of one’s body, however small, in tin foil. It’s fun, it’s easy, it gets me free quasi-Mexican food. So it’s become something of a Halloween tradition for us underemployed young people in the greater metropolitan area. There’s always a crowd, which to my mind immediately means: perfect opportunity for some creative outreach. I could put on my Halloween costume (Sally, from The Nightmare Before Christmas), go give out cupcakes, then wrap my wrist in foil, get my free burrito, and be done in time for the play my roommie and our friend Lady J had tickets for in the evening. That was my thinking after getting out of bed. Then I opened VCTOTW to this recipe, and that sealed the deal. Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes? Chocolate and cayenne pepper? What better way to celebrate the Days of the Dead?! Clearly the spirits were sending me a message.
All right, so, the cupcakes: what exactly makes Mexican hot chocolate different from any other chocolate cupcake? I already mentioned the cayenne pepper — just a pinch in the batter. Plus cocoa powder (natch), vanilla and almond extracts (still a big fan of the old stand-bys), and cinnamon to round out your spices. Instead of the usual soy or rice milk, these cakes are made with rich creamy coconut milk. Pouring it from the can, I almost wanted to forget the cupcakes and drink it straight. But I restrained myself, and luckily so, or the cakes wouldn’t have been so moist. The batter also calls for corn flour, as in the substance to which we owe tasty chips, burritos, tacos–all manner of delicious things onto which one may spoon a generous helping of guacomole. (But I wouldn’t recommend guacomole on the cupcakes.)
Either my flaxseeds have lost some of their oomphf, or my oven is dial is not spot-on (either might account for it), but these didn’t rise in the baking as nicely as other recipes have. Probably I also took them out a smidgeon too soon. Terry & Isa always say insert a fork into the center to test for done-ness; when it comes out clean, the cakes are baked. Well, my testing fork was clean, but the cupcakes still looked a little gooey. I went with it, though. I had filled some of the liners too high, and they’d baked over the sides, sticking to the pan, which meant I had to chip a few edges off the cupcake tops to get them out of the pan. Good for me — I ate the crumbs quite happily — not as good for the cupcakes’ appearance. To compensate, and also because roommie wisely advised me that anyone who gets a cupcake–even a free cupcake–with no topping feels cheated, I covered each with the Rich Chocolate Ganache Topping (143). This recipe calls for 4 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped, but I sped things along with some chocolate chips instead. The Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips (unlike most of the Ghirardelli products I’ve come across) are actually vegan and quite good, in that pretensious fine-chocolate kind of way.
Results? The cupcakes were an ooey-gooey chocolatey mess, and absolutely wonderful to eat. Rich, moist, with a nice spicy kick at the end to wake you up. But not too spicy for more sensitive palates than mine, if my roommate’s reaction is any judge. It took a lot of willpower not to hoard them for ourselves, I tell you. Fortunately we knew at least two friends who wanted to get in on the vegan Halloween madness, and we managed to get the rest of the cupcakes to Chipotle without inhaling them all. The giveaway started slowly. But my awesome roommate stuck by, handing out napkins and copies of the recipe (yes, Isa & Terry, if you’re reading this, I gave away your recipe — but I cited you!), and within an hour, we had three little cupcakes left from the original 2 dozen I’d made. One kind man even gave us a $5 donation. We met a nice family of tourists, and two actors from the local theater down the street. And we saw lots of amusing costumes. This may have to become a regular occurence.
Whew! It’s been a loooong time since I did a cupcake recipe review — hope it was worth the wait.
2 Comments
November 8, 2009 at 1:59 am
definitely worth the wait! any chance of recreating for thanksgiving? :)
November 12, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Mickel and I demand that you make these on turkey/tofurkey day.
Purr,
F