Friday, January 19, 2007

The Bloody Aftermath of the Holiday Season.

Unfortunately, I STILL feel like it's the holidays. Maybe something to do with the fact that we haven't been home for longer than three days together since, well, ThanksGIVing???! We've been pretty much running in the door, cycling through four loads of laundry, repacking our bags, and running out again, with Wallace in the background going "What the HELL???" like the bystanders in the Tasmanian Devil cartoons. Anyway, I guess it's over, and so I've thought back to the pre-Christmas preparations and dug out one of the more popular "Christmas Treat" recipes. Also from the PPK.

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting.
(Preheat oven to 350 F. Line tins with paper cupcake liners.)

Sift together 1 ¼ cups flour, 3 tsps ground ginger, 1tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp baking soda, ¼ tsp ground cloves and ¼ tsp salt.


Whisk together ½ cup vegetable oil, 1/3 cup molasses, ½ cup maple syrup, ¼ cup soymilk and 2 tbs soy yogurt until well emulsified.


Fold dry ingredients into wet, whisking to combine.

Fold in 1 ½ tsps lemon zest and ¼ cup crystalized ginger, finely chopped


Pour into tins, 2/3 of the way.
Bake 17 - 22 minutes, until top springs back when touched or a toothpick comes out clean.
When fully cooled frost them with frosting below.

Prepare the frosting
In a round bottom bowl cream ¼ cup soybean margarine and ¼ cup vegetable shortening with a strong fork. (Make sure they are thoroughly blended and smooth.) Add 1/3 cup confectioner sugar and mix, gradually adding ¼ cup soymilk. Add juice of one lemon, and keep creaming away until everything is perfectly smooth. Refrigerate until cupcakes are ready for frosting.

My favorite thing about their dessert recipes is that they taste and feel good. We regularly eat their cupcakes for breakfast.

***every time I made these, the centers would fall a little. I'm not sure why; maybe the yogurt I was using was too heavy or something...

2 comments:

Mrs. Bear said...

Did you use soy yogurt or dairy yogurt? I have no experience with soy yogurt, but there's a coffee cake recipe that I make regularly--you can use yogurt, sour cream, sour milk, or buttermilk (in slightly differing amounts) for it. When I use sour cream, it is fluffy and cakey. When I use yogurt (even watered-down), it is moister and denser, with a slightly rounded top. When I use buttermilk, the texture is somewhere in between the two, but the centers cave the tiniest bit. I have no idea why this is, but it doesn't affect the taste. :-)

I wonder if maybe the flour/wet ingredients ratio is off, or the leavening needs to be adjusted, or if it just needs to be mixed and put into the oven extroardinarily fast to capture the bubbling power of the baking powder. But if it still tastes good, I suppose it's no big deal.

Mrs. Bear said...

When I use (dairy, whole milk) yogurt to make coffee cake, even if it's watered down and in quantity, the cakes are more nicely rounded than when I use buttermilk. I'm not entirely sure why, but I wonder if the liquid/flour ratio needs adjustment. I think it's more likely than an incorrect measure of leavening, for some reason.