“Nutella” cupcakes – the vegan version

Hey there!

Today I want to share the most genius and delicious vegan cake recipe I have ever come up with. For once I was indeed not baking for a friend’s birthday, this time it was my turn to turn to be the birthday girl. Well to be completely accurate I got to say that I baked half the batch for my birthday and the other half for one of my best friend’s birthday party, which took place the day before mine. But who doesn’t like to check off two dots on their to-do list at once?

So, back to my amazingly scrumptious cupcake creation. I was going for something chocolaty, or rather something nutella-like. Nutella, one of my weaknesses during my exchange year overseas and definitely one of the causes for my slight or rather not so slight weight gain while living in Australia… Oh well, I mean who doesn’t put on a few extra kilos on exchange, it is basically a given when you sign your contract to live and go to school in a foreign country for a whole year and with every extra gram you’re also gaining tons of new amazing experiences and loads of friendships that will last a lifetime. So who cares, right?

Let’s get back on track with the baking. I did actually come up with my own version of Nutella around Christmas time last year, so I decided to include this yumminess into my birthday creation. Since I noticed that I hadn’t actually attempted to make vegan cupcakes I decided to finally have a go at it. I used pretty basic ingredients since I wanted to make this recipe ideal for everybody. I therefore decided to skip the coconut sugar, buckwheat flour and coconut oil for once and just use ordinary ingredients. After all this was my birthday cake and doesn’t a birthday cake need to be at least a little bit bad for you?!

I obviously still kept it completely vegan. I made a simple frosting of margarine and powdered sugar as well as a fairly basic batter. Nevertheless the outcome was absolutely delicious. You would have honestly never ever guessed that this cake was actually vegan, no one realised and for once I didn’t even tell people. Usually whenever I let people know that something I made was vegan their reaction usually resembles something like: “ Oh , yeah it kind of tastes like salad and tofu. “ or “I thought there was something missing” .. But honestly those reaction only ever come when I let people know, whenever I keep my mouth shut they don’t notice a thing and I just get compliments for whatever delightful treat I have created.

Cupcakes

• 1tbs of flax seed
• 4tbs water
• 50g flour
• 40g ground hazelnuts
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 70g sugar
• a dash of salt
• 40g vegan hazelnut chocolate spread*
• 150ml soymilk
• 50g chocolate

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C .
2. Ground your flax seed and mix them with 4 tbs of water. Let flax sees expand while your preparing the rest of you ingredients.
3. Add flour, baking powder, sugar, ground hazel nuts and a dash of salt into a bowl. Combine.
4. Add the hazelnut spread, the chocolate and the soymilk into a saucepan and let everything melt on medium low heat.
5. When your mixture has melted pour it into the bowl with the dry ingredients, also add your flax seed water mixture. Mix until combined.
6. Distribute your batter onto your cupcake liners. I made mini cupcakes and I got 23 out of this amount of batter.
7. Bake at 180°C for ten minutes.
8. When your cupcakes have finished baking let them cool completely before preparing the frosting.

Frosting

• 150g margarine
• 2 tbs hazelnut chocolate spread
• 160g powdered sugar

1. For the frosting add your margarine, hazelnut chocolate spread and your powdered sugar into a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixture until nice and creamy.
2. Fill your frosting into a piping bag and pipe onto your cupcakes. I also decided to remove them from their liners since I didn’t have any cute ones around. Top with whatever kind of decoration you like, I just added a red currant.
3. Let your cupcakes sit in the fridge until you decided to enjoy them.

Voila, vegan ‘’Nutella’’ cupcakes, how amazing is this?! They don’t taste quite like Nutella, yet they do indeed taste like hazel nutty chocolaty goodness, which is basically nutella described in a nutshell. They are incredibly tasty and a scrumptious treat you should definitely taste yourself. You’re missing out if you aren’t going to follow my advice, believe me.

So I guess that’s it. Come on guys, get baking and create some delicious vegan cupcakes.

*you can either use a store-bought version ( e.g. Rapunzel Samba Dark) or as I did my homemade version, you’ll find the recipe right here: Homemade Nutella

Bisous