I don’t drink much coffee, in fact it is a rarity in my diet so a coffee cupcake was not at the top of my list. Inspiration can strike at any time though and I knew that I had to make a coffee cupcake when I found vegan chocolate coated coffee beans in a health food store. I love a treat on top of a cupcake so my next cupcake was decided.
- CAKE
- 325g self-raising flour
- 265g sugar
- ½ tsp bi-carb soda
- 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp flax meal mixed with ⅓ cup water)
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1¼ cup of almond milk
- 150ml vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 30g ground coffee beans
- ½ cup hot water (no hotter than 60°C)
- ICING
- 200g vegan margarine
- 500g icing sugar
- 20g ground coffee beans (then sift)
- Dark chocolate
- Chocolate covered coffee beans
- METHOD
- Pre heat oven to 175°C (347°F)
- CAKE
- Mix coffee with water (no hotter than 60°C of you will burn the coffee). You need to strain the coffee mix. I pour it into a fine bag I use to make nut milk.
- Sift flour, bi-carb soda and add to a large bowl.
- Add sugar and salt and stir through to combine.
- Pour oil, almond milk and coffee mix into dry ingredients, add vanilla and beat until combined.
- To make the flax egg, mix flax and water into a small bowl and mix well. Do this just before you add it to the cake batter otherwise it becomes too thick.
- Beat until all combined.
- Using an ice-cream scoop, add one scoop to each cupcake wrapper.
- Bake for 18 minutes but check after 15 minutes as ovens can vary.
- Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack until room temperature.
- ICING
- Add the margarine to a large bowl and whip with your beaters.
- Add sifted ground coffee & beat
- Add half the icing sugar and beat until soft.
- Add the other half of the sugar and the vanilla and beat until soft and fluffy.
- Grate chocolate over the top of the icing and add a chocolate coated coffee bean to the top.
I have used ground coffee beans in my recipe because I wanted to use really good coffee. It does cause some extra work though with grinding and sifting & getting the water temperature just right but I think that it is worth it. You can add the dry, sifted ground coffee straight into the cake but when I tried that I found that there were a few tiny flecks of coffee in the cake and I didn’t really like the texture of that. A few of my taste testers didn’t have a problem with that though.
You could also use instant coffee & grind it for the cake and icing. I haven’t tried that myself though and I’m not sure that I have ever drunk instant coffee so I’m not sure how it would turn out. A lot of coffee cake recipes use instant coffee though so it must be ok.
I decided that these would be Cappuccino Cupcakes instead of Coffee Cupcakes so I had an excuse for adding chocolate to the top because, really, how can that not be a good thing? ♥
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