happy birfday

I love birthday baking. It’s a perfect excuse to spend all morning in the kitchen whilst the husband gets the house ready for guests.  Don’t get me wrong, I love cleaning.  I love pushing our purple Dyson across the floor and seeing our carpet transform back into the beautiful buttercream colour it originally is, but I would much rather MAKE buttercream icing in the kitchen   Especially vegan buttercream icing to go along with vegan chocolate cupcakes.

Rob is not a vegan, but our friend Nolan is and he was coming along for b-day celebrations.  And besides, if you can get away with making delicious vegan cupcakes and your non vegan friends devour them being none the wiser, why not   They can save the planet and animal lives without even knowing it!  I’m such a saint.

Peanut butter and mint icing.  Variety is key.  The vegan chocolate cupcake part is from a recipe I found here but only the cake part.  I made the icing from this recipe:

1/2 cup margarine (make sure that there is no whey in the ingredients)

5 cups icing sugar

splash of vanilla soy milk

Mix the margarine with an electric egg beaters until it gets smooth and creamy.  Add the icing sugar a few tablespoons at a time.  This is going to take a while, maybe up to 15 minutes to make the buttercream.  Adding it a little bit at a time is the best way to get it as smooth, creamy and delicious.  It also makes it easier to pipe this way.  After everything is all mixed up, throw in a splash of the soy milk to make it a bit smoother, if you add too much, just throw in a couple tablespoons of icing sugar and blend.

After all was mixed, I just split the concoction in half and added 1.5 tablespoons of peanut butter to one and a couple drops of peppermint extract and green food colouring to the other.  Pipe on to cooled cupcakes and voila!

Everyone seemed to thoroughly  enjoy them.  Happy Birthday Rob, we love you very, very much.

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