Another Gluten Free Cupcake

Recipe for Vegan, Gluten Free Chai Tea Latte Cupcakes

With the success of my Maple Bacon Gluten Free Cupcakes, I thought I would try and see if the recipe would translate to another non-Gluten Free recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The recipe I tried was Chai Tea Latte Cupcakes and I used the Gluten Free flour mixture from the Gluten Freedom Cupcakes in place of AP flour.

Hm, well they didn't turn out as nice as I had hoped. I thought the batter was looking a little watery and was worried the cakes wouldn't hold their structure. But they turned out ok. In fact, the crumb ended up being extremely moist and a bit dense. Not quite as fluffy as the Gluten Freedom Cupcakes. 

borderline "too moist" crumb

The flavor was unfortunately not so great either, which was probably mostly my fault. I was shocked to discover that I hadn't brought back one of the several bottles of ground cardamom I had in Japan. So in place of the cardamom I threw in a bit of Chinese Five Spice. Ha. Well, anise is similar to cardamom, right? ......   I also thought this cake had way too much cinnamon. In fact, that was all I could taste. But I thought there was potential in this cake, so I tried again. 

I went out and bought some $15 cardamom (!). I thought of replacing the soy yogurt with applesauce, but I wanted to get rid of some of that extra moisture, so instead I opted to omit the yogurt. I also put the loose leaf tea right into the cupcakes, rather than steep tea bags, since I really wanted the tea flavor to come out. As I was mixing, the smell of cardamom filled the kitchen and I was sure this was it. It smelled so good and nothing was even baking yet.

I have to say, the crumb looked so much better. They almost looked like they could be a little dry.

But after cutting it open I saw that it was still pretty moist. Still not quite as fluffy as I had hoped, but much better than the previous attempt. The flavor was, well, strongly of cardamom. *sigh*. BUT other than the fact that there was just way too strong a cardamom taste, I thought the cake overall was pretty good. It tasted much closer to a chai latte and the texture was much closer to a cupcake. My next thought is that perhaps I didn't mix everything long enough. Maybe my mixing even longer I can really develop the structure of the cake (and soak up the flax seeds better so you don't notice those little gritty bits when you chew). I'm also toying with the idea of scrapping the vegan part of it and using regular milk instead of soy. Not sure if that will change anything, since I haven't played around much with gluten free yet. 

So this is still a work in progress, but I am MUCH closer than before.

So here is my *untested* recipe for Gluten Free Chai Latte Cupcakes, adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk

1/4 canola oil

3/4 sugar

1tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup tapioca flour

2Tb. ground flax seeds

1/3 cup almond flour

1/2 cup white rice flour

1/2 cup quinoa flour

1tsp. baking powder

1/2tsp. baking soda

1/4tsp. salt

1tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2tsp. ground cardamom

1/4tsp. ground ginger

1/4tsp. cloves

pinch of white pepper (I used cayenne, but white pepper is probably better)

1. Preheat oven to 350℉ and prepare cupcake pans.

2. Heat soy milk in a small saucepan on medium heat until almost boiling (should at least be steaming). Remove from heat, add the tea, and let steep/cool for at least 10min.

3. Whisk together in a medium bowl the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.

4. When the soy milk has cooled a bit, pour back into measuring cup and add any extra soy milk to make sure it is 1 cup. 

5. Lightly whisk together the soy (tea) milk, sugar, oil and vanilla until blended. Add tapioca flour and flax seeds and beat on medium speed for about 1 minute, or until the tapioca has completely dissolved. You may want to beat a little bit longer to really make sure the flax seed are incorporated into the batter. 

6. Add remaining dry ingredients, mix at low speed. Once the ingredients are incorporated, switch to medium-high speed and beat for 2 minutes or more. 

7. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full (the cupcakes will rise, but deflate a bit when they are ready to be taken out of the oven) and bake 20-22 minutes. 

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Frosting Ingredients (American Buttercream):

1/2 cup high ratio shortening (Sweetex if you have it, otherwise Crisco will do)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

2-3Tb salt water (just add salt until it tastes salty, about 1-2tsp. per 1/2 cup)

1. Blend the butter and shortening until thoroughly creamed.

2. Add powdered sugar and cornstarch and slowly blend with butter mixture.

3. Add salt water small bits at a time until the frosting comes together (you may not need all the water) and then blend on medium-high for about 3-5min.

4. Spread onto cooled cupcakes. You can decorate them with large cinnamon sugar crystals.