Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes Vegan & Dairy free- Help! the cupcakes have taken over!!

We were invited to dinner by baby T's mom so of course I had to make cupcakes, again. Whether you like them or not, if you invite me over for dinner, I will bring cup cakes. Soon if you even look in my general direction you will probably be force fed cupcakes. Because, my friends, they have taken over. More specifically, Vegan Cupcakes have taken over my world.
This is another recipe adapted from that amazing book that I just cannot say enough good things about.
This time I also solved my how to gift-pack cupcakes dilemma:

1. Bake cupcakes leave them to cool. Do not frost

2. Pick out cute gift bag like these ones from retailpackaging.com or be creative and make one yourself

3.Pack cupcakes into zip lock bag

4. Make frosting and scoop it all into another seperate zip lock bag so that your gift-ee can just snip one end of the frosting zip lock and pipe it over the cuppies herself. Much less messier.
5. Put both zip lock bags, with other goodies like a card?, something hand knit? a bottle of wine maybe? into the cute giftbag
6. Ta-da! Super nice hostess/Teacher/Sorry-I-split-coffee-on-your-pretty-skirt-but-heres-a gift gift.

Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes- Vegan & dairy free
Recipe source: Adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World from here
Makes about 12 cupcakes


Wet Ingredients

• 1 cup soy milk
• 4 Earl Grey teabags or 2 tablespoons loose Earl Grey tea (I used Twinnings and next time I will use 5 bags since the taste was too mild for me with 4)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup plain soy yogurt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Dry Ingredients

• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda ( Think I will up it to 1/2 tsp baking soda next time)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Method

• Preheat oven to 375º and line tin with 12 greased cupcake liners (Grease well since these cupcakes have a tendency to stick to the liners)
• In a saucepan or in the microwave, heat soy milk until almost boiling, add tea bags and citrus zest, cover and remove from heat.
• Let sit for 10 minutes.When ready to use, stir teabags and thoroughly squeeze to make sure as much tea is dissolved in milk as possible.
• In a large bowl or in your blender, mix together oil, yogurt, sugar, vanilla and tea mixture until all yogurt lumps disappear.
• Sift dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Mix until large lumps disappear; it's okay if some small lumps remain.
• Fill tins full (since these don't rise much) and bake about 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool.

Ingredients for frosting
(I didn't frost mine, just sprinkled some sugar and orange zest over my cuppies)

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted vegan butter (The Earth Balance brand is the best)
• 2 cups powdered sugar (Or you could just whizz reqular sugar in your blender until fine and powdery)
• zest of 1/2 lemon
• 1-1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

Method

• Cream the butter until smooth, gradually beat in the powdered sugar until the mixture is very fluffy.
• Zest the lemon over the bowl into the frosting, add the lemon juice and stir until smooth.
• Spread or pipe the frosting on top of the cooled cupcakes. If you frost the cupcakes while they are still warm, the frosting may melt and become runny.

Verdict

Ease:  ❤ ❤ ❤ ♡ ♡

Taste: ❤ ❤ ♡ ♡ ♡

I was a little disappointment that they didn't rise very much. The next time I will try increasing the baking soda to 1/2 tsp instead of 1/4. Also I used Twinnings tea bags and the earl grey taste was very,very mild. Will increase to 5 or even 6 tea bags for a stronger flavor. I was very happy with the packaging though. Felt very Martha Stewart like :)

If you like this you should totally check out my other favourite cupcake & cake recipes here

All my dessert recipes are here

All my favourite Vegan recipes are here
Earl Grey Tea