Vegan Mario Brothers Cupcakes

Well hello stranger.  It's been a while!  I know.  Summer is just that way, isn't it?  Tonight my goal is to get up to date on a few projects I've worked on in the last 6 weeks between traveling and having fun at the lake.

First up, vegan Super Mario Brothers cupcakes.  This 8 year old is allergic to milk and eggs but really wanted to bite into a fluffy, delicious cupcake for his birthday.  These vegan chocolate cupcakes fit the bill and were amazingly good adorned with simple characters on top of cloudy blue vanilla frosting. 

 

While it was fun experimenting with different vegan recipes, I actually learned a few things in the trial and error process too.  For example, no matter what you read, Earth Balance butter can NOT be used in place of unsalted real butter!  Salt is used as a preservative in Earth Balance and since butter cream is generally made with unsalted butter, well, you can imagine what EB frosting tastes like.  The texture is also a bit grainy unlike butter cream.  So I had to fall back on shortening.  :(  Not my favorite taste wise, but it IS vegan!  Next time I will experiment more with different types of vegan shortenings.  If you have any recipes, I'd be happy if you passed them along.  And if you don't, you can thank me for this bit of knowledge later.  ;)