Vegan Maple Cupcakes and a Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World Cookbook Giveaway

It all started with just one cookbook.  You see, some 25 years ago I met my husband, and when I began cooking for him my repertoire included scrambled eggs and pasta.  Hence, he ate pasta 3 different ways (red sauce, pesto or alfredo... from a jar) for about 10 days before he came home from an errand with a cookbook in hand and a suggestion that perhaps we might have something that didn't include eggs or pasta that evening.  I settled myself in front of the fire and read the book cover to cover, adoring the beautiful photo splashed pages along the way.

That cookbook still sits on my shelf, though it's a bit dusty as 25 years has seen an evolution of change to my cooking style in addition to a collection of cookbooks that I don't ever see ceasing to grow.

Collage courtesy of Christina Chavez - Mama's High Strung

And today I'm thrilled to be one of 14 Food Bloggers participating in the 14-Day Valentines Day Cookbook Affair Giveaway to help you grow your own collection!  After all, who doesn't love a new cookbook?

Our group has books to suit all tastes and chances to win every day through Valentine's Day.  Here's a list of what's already up and a sneak peek at tomorrow's giveaway:

• Alice (our coordinator!) from A Mama, a Baby and a Sharpei in the Kitchen started the event with Artisan Bread Every Day .
• Christina from Mama's High Strung is featuring the incredible The Flavor Bible written by some of my favorite authors, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg. 
• Christy - Confessions of a Culinary Diva, takes us on an international journey with a French bundle including Around my French Table as well as My Paris Kitchen 
• Adriana from Great Food 360º keeps us traveling with The Cuban Table
• And a Sneak Peek... check Heather, from girlichef, tomorrow for a chance to spice up your Valentine with Cooking with Frank's® RedHot® Cayenne Pepper Sauce Cookbook
• Follow my Facebook page (Liv Life) for daily updates for the remainder of the giveaway! 

Me?  I'm turning to dessert with a little book I picked up on a whim, but one that has become our most reached for book this year.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero has brought cupcakes back into our life in a big way.

Along the path of my food and cooking evolution, both of my children became lactose intolerant.  My son severely so.

As such, the last few years have found me turning to vegan recipes, knowing they will guarantee diary-free results.  Further exploration into the vegan world has actually brought my family to a nearly all plant-based diet, but vegan baking is occasionally difficult to transition into something the whole family enjoys.

Enter Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World... light, gorgeous, flavorful, luscious, decadent, purely spectacular recipes have even my non-vegan friends asking for recipes and has also made me one of the most popular dance moms at Liv's studio.

Showing up with a batch of Toasted Coconut Cupcakes after a long day of rehearsals is a sure way to gain dance girl love, complete with hugs all around.  Not a coconut fan?  No worries, I can assure you that Peanut Butter Chocolate Heavencakes bring the same reaction.  As do Golden Vanilla Cupcakes with luscious Vegan Fluffy Buttercream.

This book, complete with glossy photo-splashed pages, is 168 pages of pure cupcake love, and I'm guessing your copy will soon be batter splattered just like ours.  I think the authors described it best:

"75 dairy free recipes that are sure to satisfy your sweet tooth and add some extra padding to your butt (or not, we do have some low-fat options!) Named “Cookbook of the Year” by VegNews, vegan cupcakes is the perfect book for beginner bakers wanting to learn the basics as well as the accomplished home baker who wants to expand her repertoire. What’s more, it’s a really awesome looking book with color photos by Rebecca Bent throughout.

We’ve got recipes to fit your every mood and to work with every dietary restriction. While most recipes are decadant and all out naughty, we didn’t leave anyone out. Your aunt is gluten free? No problem! Your boyfriend is trying to lose a few pounds? Send him our way! Your third cousin once removed is diabetic? We’ve got you covered."

Today (and until March 2nd) we are giving away one copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and one set of 300 Count Polka Dot Standard Baking Cups .

• Giveaway is open to US Residents as well as those with APO/FPO addresses
• Givewaway ends March 5th, 2015
• Givewaway includes one copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and one set of 300-count polka dot standard baking cups.  (Giveaway is paid for by me, Liv Life)
• Please enter using giveaway widget below
• Winner will be notified by email.  Winner has 48 hours to respond or we will then choose another winner. 

Comforting Coconut Cupcakes...

You never think this day will really come.  But it does.

You spend 18 years preparing for it, and you know it's the right thing.  You know you've done a good job because he is so confident.  But it still hurts.

My baby went to college last weekend, and he didn't look back.  He gave me a quick hug after we put his room together and tossed a "Thanks mom!" my direction.  "I'll text."

And that was it.

My heart split as I stoically turned, threw him a kiss and told him "Make good choices... I love you!".

He picked up his phone and answered a text as he smiled and returned an "I love you too."

Neither of us are good at goodbyes.

I made it half way down the hall before the tears started.  My husband comforted me on the elevator ride down and into the car.  Then he cried too.

We started the car and slowly made our way through the incredibly beautiful UCSB Campus, and I know he'll be happy.  He's so ready for new challenges, new people and new found independence.

But I'm not.

Today I'm alone in the house for the first time in years.  I needed to bake.  But with Liv out for the entire day, my son at college and my husband on a trip, today I baked for me.

I love to bake, but part of the love of baking is doing it for others.

These cupcakes remind me of the luscious Coconut Cupcakes we had in Santa Barbara at Crushcakes during the college orientation visits and again after dropping him off.

It's not quite like sharing them with him.  But almost.

Pumpkin Cupcake Muffins with Coconut Glaze

Really... what's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin??  They are both baked in the same tins and look pretty darn similar with the exception of mega amounts of frosting which definitely delineates a cupcake.  But what about a healthy cupcake with a glaze?  Could that not be a sweet muffin?  Or what about a muffin with more of a cake-like texture that is dusted with powdered sugar... could that not be a frosting-less cupcake?

In my mind, I guess I've always felt a muffin is healthier than a cupcake, but I have to admit I've enjoyed a good number of cupcakes that are actually healthier than many muffins.

Turning to the good 'ole internet where any truth can be discovered, I found a definition that makes sense.  According to a post on Seasoned Advice, the cupcake v. muffin question comes down to method...

From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads. In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl. Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal mixing to avoid gluten development. This gives muffins a somewhat coarse crumb.

Cupcakes are small cakes, and are made by one of the traditional cake methods such as the creaming method, the reverse creaming method, the genoise method, the chiffon method, and so on. They tend to have a finer crumb than muffins.

9/9/13 by SAJ14SAJ

 

Trying to identify our fabulous Pumpkin creation, I attempted to apply the numerous criteria for a proper description.

1. Created in the muffin method = Muffins
2. High in sugar and bringing a cake-like crumb = Cupcakes
3. Frostingless = Muffins
4. Glazed = Cupcake-like
5. On the healthier side with pumpkin and some whole grains = Muffins

Still no closer to a proper description, we've decided to go with both.  Part muffin, part cupcake, we bring you a wonderful recipe that will leave you with a title of Best Mom Ever when you surprise you kids with these for breakfast.  But really... cupcakes for breakfast??  So long as they are like muffins, it's all good.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes from Beach House Baking ... Best I've ever made!

Irresistibly deep dark chocolate cupcakes.  Moist, with a perfectly tender crumb and topped with a luscious rich frosting in addition to the perfect amount of chocolate sprinkles.  Could it be possible to make these exquisite chocolate dreams in your own home kitchen?  Even if you are not the most adept cupcake maker and an even less adept cupcake decorator?  In a word... Yes!

I'm not one to gush all that often, but I have the best job in the world.  It pays pennies on the hour, but the benefits are fabulous.  Benefits like mail days that bring cookbooks to my doorstep for review... cookbooks like Beach House Baking by Lei Shishak.

Described as an Endless Summer of Delicious Desserts, the Beach House Baking cookbook had me at the title alone, but toss in beautiful photography, foolproof recipes, ingredients found in most kitchen pantries and a passion for my beloved sand-to-surf lifestyle and we have a book that has risen in my ranks to a near all time favorite.

Author, Lei Shishak hails from the East Coast and comes with background in Private Banking that thankfully transitioned to her true love of baking.  With accomplishments including graduating at the top of her class from the Culinary Institute of America with honors, time with Chef Scott Friedman and other mentors in Los Angeles, the position of Executive Pastry Chef at Michael Mina's Stonehill Tavern at the St. Regis Monarch Beach in Orange County, CA, Lei was more the prepared to open her own bakery.

After spending a few years here in California, Lei came to know the beach lifestyle that I also fully embrace.  She sums it up aptly in her cookbook introduction... "California is not only a physical destination it's also a state of mind" and she knew she had the perfect location for her bakery in San Clemente, California.  As a California Girl myself, to completely concur.  

San Clemente, California

"I wanted to write this book so others could experience the beach lifestyle I and many others are fortunate to have.  I get to bake every day in the prettiest place on earth.  I wanted to share these tried and truly delicious recipes that I enjoy baking and sharing with everyone in my life.  My high quality, made-from-scratch desserts will transport you to beaches and tropic paradises you've alway hoped to visit.  Not only will this book bring you into the kitchen, it will take you to places beyond."

Lei Shishak, Beach House Baking

And that's exactly what her books does.  Bringing Morning Treats, Beach Beverages, Cupcakes (including Happy Hour Cupcakes!), Cookies and Brownies, Hand-Crafted Ice Cream Sandwiches (they are swoonable!), Frozen Pops, and Pies, Crisps, a Cobbler and Cheesecakes, Lei transports us to beaches around the world.  From the East Coast of the USA and on out to the West in California, to the shores of Japan and back to the Caribbean, Lei brings out our inner "surferness" and has us tasting a little bit of paradise in each recipe.

Coconut Chai Tea Lattes warm us up on chilly gray mornings while Mango Yogurt Swirl Pops cool us down with a taste of the tropics.  A fabulous Baklava recipe transports us to the shores of Santorini while Golden Butter Cupcakes with Madagascar Vanilla Buttercream take us through the Indian Ocean and the Ultimate Road Trip Cookie takes us everywhere in between.

As luck would have it, Lei established her bakery, The Sugar Blossom Bake Shop, in the quaint little California surf town of San Clemente, a mere 30 miles from my own little surf town of Carlsbad.  And with school out for summer a field trip seemed in order.

Heading north with Liv and her girlfriend, Audrey, the girls perused Beach House Baking and the miles passed quickly as they gushed over the recipes throughout the book.  Liv chose the S'Mores Cupcakes as her number one choice, and Audrey similarly gushed over the German Chocolate Getaway and the PCH (Piña Colada Highway) Cupcakes.  Me??  I swooned over the photo of a simple Dark Chocolate version topped with chocolate sprinkles.

Arriving at the bakery, luck once again was on our side as the Sugar Blossom counter featured each of our favorite cupcakes, and we placed an order of our favorites in addition to one of each of the other offerings.  Rounding out our order with the Ice Cream Sandwich of the day, the Waimea Bay (a red velvet version and also in the cookbook!) we took our treasures to an outside table and settled in to tasting.

Liv and Audrey react to a first bite of their Waimea Bay Ice Cream Sandwich!  (Kind of like a red velvet version.)

Tucking into the ice cream sandwich, the girls' eyes grew wide after their first bite.  Looking at each other they proclaimed "This is the best ice cream sandwich I've ever had!!" at exactly the same time and burst into a fit of giggles.  With groans of sweet pleasure the sandwiches were sent to Instagram in a flash and envious comments appeared almost instantly.

My favorite comment from the girls was "These taste like a real person made them and like they are filled with love."  The girls are right.

Moving on to the cupcakes we had intentions of trying each of the 8 versions we had set in our bakery box, but none of us made it past our proclaimed favorite before confirming the expected excellence and then claiming complete satiation.  Bidding the sweet Lei goodbye we made our way to the San Clemente Pier to walk off our treats and enjoyed a fabulous hour beachside.

But back home was where the challenge began.  We'd all tasted Lei's version of the cupcakes, but would I, a somewhat inadequate cupcake baker, be able to follow the Beach House Baking recipe and recreate the incredibleness?  Again... yes.

Irresistibly dark and incredibly chocolaty with that perfect moistness and tender crumb we topped our cupcakes with a luscious rich frosting and just the perfect amount of chocolate sprinkles.  Just like Lei did at her bakery and just like she described in her book.  While ours may not have been quite as pretty as hers, the taste was every bit as good (well almost... she is a master pastry chef you know...), and brought the flavors of our day on the beach into our very own kitchen.

Beach House Baking... it's the perfect summer read.  Bringing a little bit of the beach to you where ever you may be, you will find yourself turning to this incredibly beautiful book time and again for any occasion you find yourself baking.  With clearly written recipes and mouthwatering photos, Beach House Baking will have you pumping made-from-scratch treats that will garner oohs, ahhs and requests for recipes from everyone you meet.

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

Pink tastes like fun!

Pink... that was the answer I received when I asked Liv what kind of cupcakes she wanted for her 12th birthday party.  Pink?  Ok... but what does pink taste like?  Apparently pink tastes like "fun", but most importantly, with over 20 pre and early teen dancers coming to our party these cupcakes needed to be something special.  Not the little girl, overly sweet, out of the box cupcakes of yeseryear.

Searching on "pink cupcakes", results for Pink Lemonade Cupcakes came up time and again mostly with variations on a couple of recipes seeming to be used over and over.  Narrowing our choices down to two of our favorites, Liv came up with a great idea:  Why not a cupcake taste test at the party?  Done.

From scratch version from Sweet Cheeks

Our two most popular versions of Pink Lemonade Cupcakes had one totally from scratch and the other a cake mix enhanced recipe, but both arriving with wonderful reviews.

Sweet Cheeks in the Kitchen provided our favorite from scratch recipe bringing a cupcake with a lightly sweetened lemon flavor and a nice tender crumb.  Pink Lemonade Concentrate provides the perfect addition to bring sweetness and tartness all at the same time and smiles to everyone who tasted.

Enhanced cake mix from Foodie Bride

Confections of a Foodie Bride provided our second Pink Lemonade Cupcake version, and with her simple description of "Bright", she had us at the first word of her blog post.  This lower in fat recipe had me smiling even before I had my first taste of the tender little cakes and the ease of putting them together had me making a batch with minimal effort.

Double batches of each version all wrapped in pretty, colorful liners caught nearly each girl's eye entering the house in full birthday party mode.  Fresh from a week long dance intensive class, the girls were hot, tired and hungry.  Pizza, strawberries and bananas were the first order of the day followed by a cooling dip into the pool and then... cupcakes!

Eager helpers had the cupcakes passed out in no time, at least one taste of each recipe, and then the girls were off to discuss the nuances and differences of each one.  A white board was provided to keep track of their thoughts and votes as the girls spent an inordinate amount of time actually discussing appearance, texture, color and taste.

For appearance and color, most girls chose the "bright pink" cupcake which actually was colored somewhat accidentally.  Not being a food color person, my experience with food dyes is somewhat limited.  Let's just say that food color gels work exceptionally well, and one really does not need more than a very, very small amount to color a batch of cupcakes pink.  Hence... electric pink cupcakes which actually rated very high on the appearance scale. 

Texture... the scratch cupcake barely edged out the mix version for texture, though the preferences here were not very strong.  Comments of "light and airy" were given nearly equally to both cakes, though I will admit to personally preferring the from scratch cupcake over the mix version.  The from scratch cake had a crumb that simply was preferable to me.

Water slides work up an appetite!

Taste.  Here the mix cupcake nudged the from scratch cake to take the lead.  With the mix cake being somewhat sweeter it seemed to have more immediate appeal to the girls.  While the lemonade flavor enhanced both versions, it was more pronounced in the from scratch version and not as appealing as pure sweetness in the pre-teen world.  For me, the from scratch version won hands down in taste, though I will admit to being partial to lemon. 

All tallied, the electric pink cake mix cupcake came out the winner, though not by much.  Voting was split just about down the middle with 62% choosing the sweeter electric pink enhanced cake mix version.  Would we make either of them again?  Absolutely!  Each version was made as written on the author's site and either version is wonderful, tasty, pretty and most importantly, fun.  Pink is most definitely the way to go.

Lucky Liv and her friends

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Perusing my new Twitter account I noticed a comment that today, January 24th, is National Peanut Butter Day!  I have to admit I did not research any further to find truth to the statement, however, even a claim for National Peanut Butter Day is good enough for me.  We must celebrate!

With encouragement from Foodbuzz, Frigidaire and Jennifer Garner who are working together on Frigidaire's new Kid's Cooking Academy  to inspire families to cook together while making healthy choices, we decided to direct our National Peanut Butter Day Celebration in a kid friendly direction.  You can help too by visiting the Kid's Cooking Academy.  Each day you visit, Frigidaire will donate $1 to Save the Children.  In addition, with every Foodbuzz Featured Publisher post submitted for the cause, Foodbuzz and Frigidaire will donate an additional $50! 

While Peanut Butter Cupcakes are extraordinarily kid friendly they are also popular with any peanut butter loving adult, and have been joyfully served at Liv Life birthday parties in years past.  A simple recipe brings the opportunity for kids to participate in the creation of this low-fat treat provided by Cooking Light (See Liv's smile - about 2001!).  We took the liberty of adding a touch of spelt flour to the ingredients to bump up the nutritional value (slightly, but better than nothing!) and due to our lactose intolerant teenager, low fat organic soy milk has been substituted without any loss of flavor or texture.

Originally printed in Cooking Light Magazine in 2000, Liv has participated in whipping up these cupcakes since she was a tot.  Now she makes the entire batch by herself, but we are in agreement that the ever popular Buzz Lightyear cupcake liners are a must!

Fastest Fudge Cake (or cupcakes!)

Eleven years ago last week the world became a better place with the much anticipated arrival of our daughter, Liv.  Liv made her entrance in San Diego early one morning and has been "Living Life" to the fullest ever since.  Her zest for life is contagious and I rarely see her without a smile spread across her face.

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have not just Liv's happy smile, but the smiles of 11 additional jubilant young ladies as we celebrated Liv's 11th birthday with a pool party that was so wonderful it actually brought out our elusive San Diego sun!  Swimming was the activity of the afternoon, topped off with pizza, fruit and some amazing Chocolate Cupcakes that Olivia frosted and decorated herself.  Specially chosen cupcake wrappers were used along with small, yet colorful sprinkles for a simple finish.

Living across the street from a cake baker has it's privileges.  One of those privileges being access to some really fantastic cake recipes and baking advice.  Claudine Jones, of Frosted, shared one of her successful recipes from Kathryn Kleinman's book Birthday Cakes: Recipes and Memories from Celebrated Bakers.  Last month Olivia made this cake for her grandmother's birthday all by herself with impressive result and she knew it would be the perfect recipe for her own birthday cupcakes as well.  Ms. Kleinman uses a Fast Fudge Frosting that is a bit more like glaze, not quite as thin as a glaze, but definitely not a thick as a nice butter cream.  As Liv likes to use her pasty bag and tips for pretty swirls and designs she chose her favorite butter cream type of frosting for this day.

Cupcakes took the place of a large cake for simplicity and... well because she really likes cupcakes!  The cupcakes bake into a beautiful, chocolaty color with a crumb that is tender and moist.  Personally, I favor the Fudge Frosting that is recommended with the recipe, but either frosting is a perfect complement.