Weekends are the best.

Today has been relaxing and productive.  We woke up and went to the grocery store, made food, cleaned the kitchen, I cleaned my office!, bought a few things for the house AND we made cupcakes.

I was looking out the kitchen window this morning and I saw these lovely flowers! I didn’t even know they were planted beside the house.

My tea plant has been sprouting new leaves like crazy the passed few weeks. I think there’s some sort of vine or branch popping out on the top of the plant.

Juniper is spoiled. She was napping in the sun today and then Eric brushed her. She kindly flipped over so he could brush her other side. She thanked him with a little kitty kiss.

I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing this afternoon too! I love Saturdays!

Sunday fun food!

This morning I made a fabulous banana, blueberry, mango and chocolate Vega smoothie. I also decided today would be the day to make those cupcakes.

 

Chocolate cake and peanut butter icing! 100% vegan and 100% OMG!!

 

Today I also decided to try making those baked spring rolls that I made a few weeks ago. This time I used rice wrappers.

 

There's still not something right with the spring rolls. The rice wrappers started to crisp, but were still very very soggy. I need to do a little more research on this. The inside goodness of the spring rolls are perfect I would say...but I need to work on the wrappers.

 

And now I’ll get on my high horse.  The past few weeks on Facebook I’ve seen my friends posting photos of abused and horrendously tortured animals.  They then go on to complain about how the people who commit these acts of violence against animals need to have the same thing done to them.  Now here we go…I’m going to be THAT vegan.  If you eat meat you too are participating in horrendous acts of violence against animals.  Do your research!  Factory farms are horrible places and “humane” ways of killing animals for food is still horrible.  There’s nothing humane about killing someone else.  And if you want to talk about animals kept for egg laying and milking…they’re still tortured too.  Ain’t no better ya’ll.

Go vegan!

horses. they get what they want.

and they wanted some yellow velvet cupcakes.

vegan chocolate cupcakes with pink vanilla icing!

a few weeks ago i tried the “vegan cupcakes take over the world,” book for the first time. i didn’t post the recipe because i didn’t know if i’d fail at baking the cupcakes or not. it turns out i didn’t fail and now i want to post the recipe! this time i made chocolate cupcakes. mmm!

here’s what you’ll need for the cake portion of the cupcakes…
-1 cup soy milk
-1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
-3/4 cup granulated sugar
-1/3 cup canola oil
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/2 teaspoon almond extract, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-1/3 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-processed or regular
-3/4 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt

and what to do…
-preheat oven to 350° and line a muffin pan with paper liners.
-whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. add the sugar, oil, vanilla extract, and other extract, to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. in a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until no large lumps remain.
-pour into liners, filling 3/4 of the way. bake 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

and for the vegan fluffy buttercream frosting…
-1/2 cup nonhydrogenated shortening
-1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
-3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar sifted
-1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-1/4 cup plain soy milk

-beat the shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy.
-add the sugar and beat for about three minutes
-add the vanilla and soy milk, beat until fluffy.
-icing the cupcakes after they have cooled.

*this recipe makes about a dozen large cupcakes, but you may have some batter let over to make mini cupcakes if you’d like!

the finished product!