Vegan Lemon Cupcake recipe

I quite often receive orders for cupcakes that have to match certain dietary requirements.  Whether it be egg free, gluten, dairy free or even vegan I still have to stick to my cupcake rules – no artificial flavourings & no nasty stuff.  I know I often bang on about this a little too much, but it is really important to me that my cupcakes contain nothing but yummy goodness and you know that you are not putting anything nasty into your tummies.  It has taken me a while to perfect my recipes too so now that I am confident with these I feel its only right to share a few every now and again – sharing is caring and all that!

So today, I am going to share a really simple vegan cupcake recipe.  Its not only vegan, its also gluten free and of course dairy free – vegan’s don’t eat any animal product whatsoever – so no butter, no eggs, no cream for example.  Oh and just to clear anything up – I’ve often seen people commenting saying they use Stork spread in vegan cakes – you mustn’t as this actually has buttermilk in! A tiny bit, but still not acceptable.

This recipe will yield 24 yummy, light & fresh cupcakes, and will easily double up if you need to make more:

Vegan Lemon Cupcakes:

Recipe:

• 320 g caster sugar
• 150 ml sunflower oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 fresh lemons, juice and rind
• 500 g dairy-free soya yoghurt
• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 350 g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoons baking powder

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160°C and line your cupcake tin ready

1. In one large bowl place the sugar, oil and vanilla extract then beat with a mixer for 2 minutes, until well combined.
2. Next mix the yoghurt and vinegar together in a smaller bowl, then add the lemon rind and juice to the mixture and beat for 1 minute.
3. Add the sieved flour, bicarb and baking powder and mix until smooth and just combined.
4. Scoop evenly into your cases
5. Bake for 24 minutes, but if they still look a little pale (depending on your oven), give them an extra 2 minutes

For the icing:

• 350g icing sugar
• 1 lemon
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 100g vegan margarine – I prefer to use Sunflower Pure spread, but another acceptable one is Vitalite.
• Literally add everything except the lemons to one mixing bowl and whizz together.  Squeeze out the lemon juice and then as previously done also grate the rind and add this to your icing.

Enjoy