Pomegranate orange cupcakes

Hey, guys! Once again, it’s been a while…you may or may not have heard that I finally uploaded my vegan cake cookbook!! Like…two months ago, to the day. Agh! Has it really been that long? Time sure flies when it’s summer vacation, jesus christ.

Anyway. So I know I promised to return to regular posting, but clearly I didn’t follow through on that promise. Which I have no explanation for except my own laziness and the fact that I straight-up forgot about this blog for a while.

Nonetheless, I thought I’d try to provide a bit of context for my absence this past year and my sudden return with more recipes. Just for posterity. And for my own closure. And in case there is anyone out there who cares.

So basically, I stopped posting around the end of the school year in 2016. I’m not sure why I didn’t post over the summer, as I was probably still baking semi-regularly. I also accumulated a few more potential blog posts (recipes and photographs, but no text) which is why I have stuff to post now (more on that later)—like these cupcakes, which I made sometime last year. The recipe’s still good, I assure you! Nothing’s changed! I’m kind of drooling over my own pics right now, actually.

Does that make me a narcissist

Then last fall, I went to college! Yep, moved out of state to live in a dorm and everything. As you may understand, it’s kind of hard to carry out elaborate baking projects in a tiny kitchen you share with like a hundred other people. Also there’s the fact that I didn’t have time, nor did I really feel like baking. I also could’ve posted those old recipes I had then, but I didn’t.

Then winter break came and went, then spring semester (which went, uh, dubiously well) and now here I am! The cookbook, I should mention, I put together shortly after the end of the spring semester. I had all 30 recipes prepared like, over a year ago, but for some reason I never sat down to actually format and publish the goddamn thing. Again, just my own laziness. It actually wasn’t that difficult once I got down to it, if you don’t count the fact that I stayed up until 4 am formatting the PDF, then had to wait like a week to finish jumping through all the hoops necessary for the creation of a PayPal account. I’m sure glad that’s over with.

Now, as for why I wasn’t motivated to do all these things for so long? I uh…kinda lost interest I guess. I’d been blogging and baking semi-hardcore for like, two years at this point last year. I was running out of steam. Like most teenagers, I had my phases, and that was my baking phase. I think part of it was that I was losing interest in vegan baking. Which I feel bad about! The thing is, vegan baking does have a shit ton of limitations; and while the final product can absolutely taste good, it often requires a lot of expensive special ingredients / substitutions / jumping through hoops that can become tiresome. Especially when you’re looking at all these cool recipes that you can’t make because they call for too many eggs or, like, a teaspoon of gelatin, and you’ve already given up on trying to adhere to a strictly vegan diet anyway (I’m a vegetarian).

This is not me trash-talking vegan baking! I think it’s cool and the results can be mind-blowingly good and it was an awesome experiment to try for a solid two years of my adolescent life. But I think I’m done. This past summer, I’ve made a handful of layer cakes (going back to my roots) and some other desserts, and all of them have been non-vegan. I didn’t photograph them either, so I wasn’t going to publish them anyway. But know that I am throwing around the idea of continuing this blog as a non-vegan baking blog. It wouldn’t be anytime soon, since I have, like, eight vegan recipes I haven’t posted, and I haven’t done any *real* food photography in a while. Plus if anything it would be on a super casual basis since I am returning for my sophomore year of college in… a month (oh my god). Just putting that possibility out there.

Anyway ummmm that sure was a wall o’text. That’s pretty much it though.

Oh yeah—and while I haven’t been blogging over here this past year, I have been blogging elsewhere: tumblr dot com. Surprise, surprise. Blogging over there is way easier though. Which is probably why I’ve been able to run six blogs on that platform simultaneously without combusting.

But that’s neither here nor there. ONTO THE RECIPE.

Fucking finally

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Pomegranate molasses

Adapted from Simply Recipes

Ingredients

490 grams • pomegranate juice • 2 cups

50 grams • granulated sugar • ¼ cup

30 grams • lemon juice • 2 tablespoons

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat on medium high until the sugar has dissolved and the juice simmers. Reduce heat just enough to maintain a simmer. Let simmer for about an hour, until the mixture is syrupy and has reduced to about ¾ cup. Transfer to a jar and let cool completely before using.

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Pomegranate orange cupcakes

Adapted from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky

Ingredients

Orange cupcakes

245 grams • orange juice • 1 cup

2 grams • orange zest • 1 tablespoon

55 grams • olive oil • ¼ cup

4 grams • vanilla extract • 1 teaspoon

158 grams • all-purpose flour • 1 cup plus 2 ½ tablespoons

175 grams • granulated sugar • ¾ cup

20 grams • cornstarch • 2 ½ tablespoons

4 grams • baking powder • 2 teaspoons

2 grams • baking soda • ½ teaspoon

2 grams • salt • ¼ teaspoon

Pomegranate frosting

168 grams • vegan butter, room temperature • ¾ cup

240 grams • powdered sugar • 2 cups

60 grams • pomegranate molasses (see recipe above) • 3 tablespoons

15 grams • nondairy milk • 1 tablespoon

Pinch salt

Pomegranate seeds, to taste

Directions

First, make cupcakes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease 12 cupcake tins.

In a large bowl, whisk together orange juice, orange zest, olive oil, and vanilla. Whisk together flour, sugar, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet and whisk until the batter comes together; a few lumps are fine.

Divide batter between muffin tins and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool in tins for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make pomegranate frosting, place vegan butter in the bowl of an electric stand mixer and beat until smooth. With mixer on low speed, spoon in powdered sugar and beat until incorporated. Add pomegranate molasses, nondairy milk, and salt and beat on medium-high until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Pipe frosting on top of cupcakes to finish. Decorate with pomegranate seeds. Munch.

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