MoFo Day Twentyseven: Eleventh Hour Cupcakes!

  Oh it was all looking so good yesterday: Miranda had baked the lemon drizzle cake for the next stage of Pony's birthday 'season'; we were SO ahead! Then doubts started creeping in..Miranda had baked the cake in a bigger tin than usual because we were sharing it with our friends Paula, Karl and their daughter Kitty; but hadn't had enough lemon to double the recipe so the cake wasn't very deep and Miranda began to be concerned that the cake was slightly overcooked because of being so shallow. She turned it on its side (perhaps in hindsight not a very sensible thing to do!) to show me the base of the cake, and promptly snapped the cake in half! It wasn't broken all the way through but the crunchy layer of drizzle, which had set by this time, was cracked too, so it really didn't look very good!

The Batter Had Seemed Strange From the Start..

   Miranda was really upset, especially as we had no more lemons so couldn't just repeat the recipe but we decided to change the cakes round so that the lemon drizzle cake would now be at the weekend, by which time we'd have more lemons (please remind us to get some more tomorrow, ok?) and we would have cupcakes today instead. Cupcakes don't take that long so we thought there'd be plenty of time to make them this morning before we went to our friends' house.
   We were running a bit late this morning (it's a long story- you'd be bored!) so Miranda made the cupcakes a bit later than we'd planned, perhaps an hour before we were supposed to be going. She used a tried and tested recipe, which used to be Nigella Lawson's, but is now, we think, probably our friend Paula's as it has been veganised and changed so much that, according to Paula, who knits (you should see the tiny Christmas stockings she knits!), if it were a knitting pattern, it would now be hers, so we assume that the same probably applies to recipes..
   Even as she was mixing the batter Miranda was concerned that it looked a bit weird- I don't know what she'd done wrong, but weird is how they came out. They were bubbling strangely when they came out of the oven and as they cooled they sank in the middle, the surface seemed rather pitted and they became rather hard! I actually hate to admit that such a thing as a vegan baking failure exists! Vegan baking is very easy and usually very very reliable, but this definitely was a failure- there was a lot going on here this morning, and maybe Miranda was distracted and weighed out and put in the sugar twice- that seems the likeliest explanation to me, given what the cakes looked like- too ghastly to even photograph!!
   Miranda was really REALLY upset by now; it was time to leave for our friends and we had no birthday cakes! So, I calmed her down, told her to start loading the children into the car, getting coats, etc etc while I reached for my trusty and very battered copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and flipped to her basic cupcake recipe. This is an unbelievably simple, quick and TRULY BRILLIANT recipe which is absolutely foolproof. It always works EVERY TIME. And the cupcakes it makes are light and fluffy and bouncy and spongey- and they really came through for us today! I was mixing them as toys were being loaded into the car, baking them while coats and cardigans were being collected, mixing icing while they cooled, and in fact blobbing on icing while they were still slightly warm. I stuck jelly hearts on them and we left.

   Unfortunately, on the way to Paula, Karl and Kitty's house, a partridge made a dash across the road in front of us, and we had to brake very sharply and a couple of them fell into the foot well of the car, but luckily, they were fine because they were so light and airy that they bounced- straight back up onto the plate again! Now that's truly great vegan baking!
  By the way, was there something I was supposed to buy tomorrow..?