More about yesterday & cupcake recipe review

We did INDEED have a storm after all! It was great- the rain just poured down and I just got so happy. :) There were tornado warnings northwest of us though, which isn't so cool....

Also, Iron Chef America was on last night... I don't really watch TV much, so many things make me want to yell 'NOT VEGAN!'. Usually, that show makes me want to rip my eyes out and pulse them in a blender. It's always SO meat centered, and Bobby Flay could possibly be in my top 10 least favorite people I have never met. In fact, the other day the secret ingredient was BEEF. Kobe beef. I almost threw up and cried at the same time when they showed a tableful of dead cow...

In any case, I watched Iron Chef again last night. And guess what the 'secret ingredient' was?

Eggplant!

Wonderful eggplant! My favorite vegetable! :D

Anyways, that made me happy... even though most the food they made was kinda/very gross- deep fried eggplant, fish wrapped in eggplant... :(


Recipe Review: Fluffy White Cupcakes and the "Anything Goes" icing from How it all Vegan

I was in a cupcake-baking mood the other day, and I chose this Vegan Lunch Box recipe because it looked real easy. Plus, it used oil instead of margarine, which is a real big plus. We only use tub margarine at home, so it's a pain to try to measure.

Anyways, the recipe was easy to follow and turned out great. I don't eat cupcakes (heh) but my mom and sisters just wolfed them down. Two big thumbs up!

For the frosting, we used a recipe from Sarah Kramer & Tanya Barnard's How it all Vegan, using coconut extract. It worked fantastically as well.

There's coconut extract in both the cupcake batter and the icing, so shredded coconut made sense as a topping. :)

Before icing....

And after!

This cupcake was made in a 'muffin top' tray. I put 2 drops of food colouring on top just before baking and kinda swirled it around, to make it look like fireworks. :) One of my sisters tried that too with some of the smaller ones, and they turned out great as well.

And about food colouring... is it vegan? I'm doing some research right now and haven't been able to come across anything concrete. I know that red (carmine) often comes from cochineal insects, but is that so even with the little packages of food colouring?