Wow! There are a ton of birthday’s in April! So, tonight I’m making cupcakes again for a friend of ours whose birthday is this weekend. But I decided to try something new tonight and make it gluten-free and dairy free. The birthday girl isn’t either of these things, but in order for everyone to enjoy them, I chose to try it this way. Oh and I made them mini instead of the regular sized.
Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Vanilla Cupcakes
Based off of this recipe from Elana’s Pantry – which has become my go to website for baking these past few days.
I began by sifting the almond flour – it’s pretty dense so I had to bust out the old fashion sifter that you have to turn.
Sifted Almond Flour
Combine remaining dry ingredients and set aside. Next start with the wet ingredients.
Eggs
Combining all of the wet ingredients
All Wet ingredients added
Once added to bowl, mix until well combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry.
Wet Ingredients added to Dry
After combining the ingredients I lined my mini muffin pan with cupcake liners and then used my Tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop out the batter into the liners.
Popped it into a 300 degree oven for about 17 mins. Once done, I cooled in the pan for a few mins and then took them out of the pan and placed onto a cooling rack
Unfrosted cooled mini cupcakes
As they’re cooling, I made the chocolate frosting.
Vegan Chocolate Frosting
I used this recipe from Elana’s Pantry.
Melt chocolate on stove, low heat.
Adding Chocolate to melt
Once melted, I added the remaining wet ingredients and stirred until well incorporated. I do not have grapeseed oil, so I used what I had on hand, Smart Balance oil
Additional ingredients added
Elana recipe recommends popping into the freezer to cool for about 15 mins and next time I would recommend doing it for that long, I got distracted and it was probably in the freezer for about 30 mins, which meant it was hard and had to soften up a bit for the next step, which is to beat it in the mixer until fluffy.
Beat chocolate mixture until fluffy
I cranked my mixer up pretty high in hopes of softening the frosting. I can’t believe the solid mass I had before turned into this nice fluffy frosting. It’s delicious as well. I think this will be my new go to chocolate frosting!!
Chocolate Frosted Mini Cupcakes
I didn’t pipe these either, #1 because I forgot to take out the frosting when I went to the gym this morning and it was still cold and #2 I like that homemade look so that’s what I went with.
Another shot
Please excuse my ancient baking pan.
Mini cupcake
These are AMAZING. I love baking gluten-free it is truly delicious.
These came together very easily and are really yummy. I’m hoping that the birthday girl will enjoy these mini cupcakes as much as I have “sampling” them.
Peace out y’all….
