Red Velvet Beetroot Vegan Cupcakes with Coconut Frosting

Nothing says indulgence like a red velvet cupcake, but as these are made entirely from plants it's basically like eating one of your five a day...right?

These cupcakes are super easy to make and great for celebrations (or maybe just a friday night in). 

I've been dabbling in the vegan baking scene for a while now, and with a couple of fails behind me I found cupcakes to be my savior. The ingredients were fairly standard store cupboard items:

Ingredients for the cupcakes

Ingredients for icing

I don't know about you but whenever I bake following a recipe my eyes go straight from the picture to a cursory glance over the ingredients, making sure I have the basics, and then I just begin. It's usually around the 4th line when it says 'allow this to cool overnight' that I realise my error! So just a heads up; you'll want to start this recipe fairly early, maybe even the day before. The beetroot needs to be roasted for an hour and then given time to cool - if you start making these at 10pm the day before a bake sale you'll have some issues.

Often with vegan baking very specific ingredients are called for, like vanilla unsweetened almond milk or something else you can only buy in Waitrose. Usually with baking you just need a non dairy milk, so just use whatever you have in your fridge or can be bought easily. I used coconut milk for this recipe - from a carton not from a can - but you could use any non dairy milk you fancy such as almond or soy. The fat in this recipe is also interchangeable, I ended up using a mild olive oil but you could also use coconut oil or a vegan margarine spread, whatever you have handy! 

I've iced these cupcake with a really simple frosting that I found in one of my favorite recipe books, The Thug Kitchen. This straight talking cookbook is a great intro to vegan cooking as the writers explain some more unusual ingredients and where to buy them, and all the recipes are so tasty. This frosting is the bomb so kudos to the Thugs and their no nonsense cooking. 

Don't stand for any nonsense when it comes to cupcakes

RECIPE
Makes around 15 cakes if you use a muffin tin or 24 if you use a cupcake tin. Optional whether you share them with friends or eat them in one sitting like a winner.

INGREDIENTS

Cupcakes
1 medium beetroot (fresh, not pickled)
1 cup (240ml) non dairy milk (I used coconut milk from a carton, not a tin)
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (60ml) plain olive oil 
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup (200g) plain flour
1/2 cup (100g) unsweetened cocoa powder, plus a little extra for decorating
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 
a pinch of salt

Frosting
1 tin coconut milk
2 tbsp icing sugar 
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

METHOD
1. First up; bake the beets. Preheat your oven to 180C and prepare your beet by removing most of the stem and giving them a good wash. Once baked the peel will slip right off so I just left it on. Give it a little rub in oil and cover in foil before whacking in the oven for about an hour, or until a butter knife can easily slice through.
2. As soon as you've put your beet in the oven put the tin of coconut milk in the fridge, you'll want this really cold for the frosting.
3. When the beet is baked dice it up small and put in the fridge to cool to room temperature. The dicing will speed up the cooling process.Once cool I just ran these chunks through a food processor so they were shredded, but you could just as easily mash them or grate them by hand, although it may stain your hands!
4. Line your cupcake tin with cute liners.
5. Whisk the non dairy milk and vinegar in a mixing bowl briefly before adding the sugar, oil, vanilla extract and shredded cooled beets. Whisk this until foamy.
6. Sift the dry ingredients into the mixture, your flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb and salt and slowly incorporate this into your batter.
7. Pour the batter into the liners, filling the cupcakes almost to the top. Bake for around 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool. Be patient here and actually wait until they've properly cooled.

Chef is allowed one for tasting though. That's just a rule of baking

8. While these are cooling it's time to make some icing. Get the coconut milk out the tin and open it out over a sieve, so that you're able to collect the white solid part. The coconut water at the bottom of a tin would be perfect in my fig and pistachio smoothie.
9. Combine all the icing ingredients in a mixing bowl and whip until it holds it's shape, about a minute or two.

10. Pop the icing into the fridge until the cupcakes are completely cool, then ice generously. Sprinkle with a bit of cocoa powder and these are ready to go!

These cupcakes are so much more moist then a standard shop bought red velvet, and you know the red colour is natural and not created by an uncomfortable amount of food dye! Even my boyfriends dad who finds it difficult to eat anything green gave these the thumbs up, so these would be really good to share with friends who are a little skeptical that vegans eat anything other than hemp seeds and tofu. 

Enjoy!