Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Buttercream Frosting & a Brownie Bonus

More vegan baking adventures!
As I mentioned in the last post - birthdays gave me an excuse to try out some new goodies.
For the birthday girl:
Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Buttercream Frosting.
Yum!
The recipe is from the cookbook: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Cupcakes-Take-Over-World/dp/1569242739
This book is now on my cookbook wishlist because they turned out fabulously!
The only drawback about these cupcakes is that they only made 12. I suppose that this is so you don't overindulge, because although they are vegan - they are still sweets & that's fine - just everything in moderation.
Here is where I found the recipe:
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10794
I followed the recipe using almond extract w/o alcohol (which is more syrupy) for the second extract ingredient. Again I was without dutch processed cocoa so I used the Hershey's Special Dark. The cupcakes were not quite as chocolaty as I would have liked but chocolate cupcakes are never have a very strong chocolate flavor. The consistency was wonderful - very fluffy and moist.

For the frosting I used this recipe:
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10856
Incredible!! If I were not vegan - this would still be the recipe I would choose. I have never in my life used shortening & intentionally did not read the label (even though it is vegetable based and non-hydrogenated) because I just didn't want to know. I did use the Earth Balance "buttery sticks" and they worked well.

I did have quite a bit of frosting leftover. It probably would have been enough to frost 24 cupcakes, so you could double your cake recipe. I, however, chose to dispose of the remainder by spreading it on graham crackers (you can find vegan brands).

yum yum yum.

The brownies I did not document with photos & they were less successful. For the birthday boy I made this first batch because it seemed very healthy:
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Scrum-Diddly-Umptious-Vegan-Brownies-150473
They were more cake like rather than gooey. Two of my testers said that they were not sweet enough and actually used the word "bitter chocolate". Well, I didn't want anyone having a bitter birthday brownie so I tried this recipe:
http://people.tribe.net/arize/blog/3e60a521-dd86-44d5-82d2-92bc846782ca
This recipe had more of your traditional brownie taste but I found them to be too oily - the kind where you have greasy fingers after eating. They were very very moist and had a better chocolate flavor in my opinion.
I am very happy with the cupcake result but think that I am going to need to do more baking to find the perfect vegan brownie.