Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Gluten Free Carrot Cupcakes

These were super good. I used Bryanna Clark Grogan's high fiber flour recipe again (except for I replaced some of the brown rice flour with Arrowhead Mills AP Gluten free baking mix out of concern for my overworked seed grinder grinding up brown rice). I felt it would be ideal for a carrot cake recipe. I was exactly correct. I attended a friends wedding, and one of her friends is on a gluten free diet, so I figured, take care of all the special needs at once, and earn some points for team vegan. I really think this is an excellent form of outreach, as well as a nice thing to do.

The recipe I used for the cupcakes was (aside from the substitution of the GF flour) from Vegan w. a Vengeance. I used walnuts instead of macadamia nuts, and I skipped the coconut, and subbed water for the pineapple juice. I did also add a little more oil than the recipe called for. For the icing, I wanted to do a cream cheesey style icing, but didn't feel like going to Whole Foods for faux cream cheese, so I made 'sea foam icing' from Vegan Vittles, which involves dissolving agar flakes in maple syrup on the stove. Has anyone ever gotten agar flakes to ACTUALLY DISSOLVE? Because they end up like little clear grains of rice floating around, and are chewy and kinda knarly in fact. So I had to strain the little bug-egg like wierdos out of the maple syrup, then the icing wasn't coming together, I had to add powdered sugar and then xanthan gum. So not exactly the best texture ever. I would like to work with agar appropriately, I wish some cookbook was actually honest about what an annoying non-dissolving product it is. I am going to grind it in the seed grinder next time before trying to dissolve it.

I really enjoyed the cupcakes a lot. I couldn't tell they were gluten free. Its nice to be able to say 'I couldn't tell it wasn't the real thing', when I have actually eaten the real thing recently, as opposed to say, the many cheese-like substances or faux meats where I haven't eaten 'the real thing' in so long that I have totally lost perspective.

The brother of the bride is vegan and brought vanilla cupcakes from 'The Joy of Vegan Baking'. Man, they rocked! I enjoyed them so much.