Making Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

Today, I was flipping through my “Vegan Cookbook for Beginners” and found the recipe for Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes. Considering that my younger sister has celiac disease I thought this would be an interesting recipe to try out.

When gathering and prepping the ingredients, I forgot to consider cutting the recipe in half. So, if you want only 12 cupcakes instead of 24 make sure to cut the measurements in half.

What the recipe calls for:

(the measurements in ( ) I added to indicate what you would need for half of the recipe)

1¾ cups (½ cup 6 tbsp) of Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
¾ cup (6tbsp) of Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
2 (1) teaspoons of Baking Soda
1 (½) teaspoon of Baking Powder
2 (1) cups of Evaporated Cane Juice (in other words Organic Cane Sugar)
2 (1) cups of Unsweetened Almond Milk
½ (1/4) cup of Melted Coconut Oil
1 (½) tablespoon of Distilled White Vinegar
1 (½) teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
4 (2) tablespoons of Warm Water
1 (½) tablespoon of Ener-G Egg Replacer

For the steps, I am going to follow the ones that are listed in the cookbook, but am going to add my tips and pictures to give you an idea of what things should look like.

1.Preheat your oven to 350°F. So your oven will be ready when you’re done mixing the ingredients.

2. Insert paper liners in 2 standard 12-cup muffin pans. I only have one muffin pan so if you want to make 24 cupcakes but only have one pan you’ll just have to add the second batch after you cook the first.

3. In a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and baking powder. Beat in the cane juice.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the almond milk, coconut oil, vinegar, and vanilla extract. Do not be alarmed by the texture, you will start to see chunks form this is because the coconut oil is returning to its solid form. As a heads up I want to add the need to be careful about getting coconut oil on your clothes because you cannot get the stains out, I know this from prior experience.

5. With your mixer or stand mixer on low speed, pour in the almond milk mixture into the the dry mixture and beat for 30 seconds, or until it is smooth. Depending on your mixture you may have to go beyond 30 seconds to ensure everything is mixed, I know I did.

6. In a small bowl, whisk together the warm water and egg replacer.

I forgot to take a picture of the mixture before I added it to the big bowl. This is what the consistency should look like.

7. Add the egg replacer/water mixture to the other ingredients and beat for 30 seconds.

8. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin pan, filling each cup with ¼ cup of batter. You can just eye-ball this if that is how you like to bake, but if you aim at following the recipe directly I suggest spooning the batter into the span with a ¼ measuring cup as I did as it allowed me to use all of the batter.

9. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick is inserted and the center comes out clean. With the first batch I made I put them in for 19 min, but ended up leaving them in for another minute. For my second batch I put them in for 20 minutes.

10. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes before frosting. I didn’t add frosting to mine because personally I don’t like frosting, the cupcakes taste great on their own anyways.