(c) photo Fernando Mengoni

Chicagoans are in for a sweet treat that just doesn’t come along all the time: a cupcake eating contest. According to ChicagoNow.com, Bleeding Heart is an organic bakery that is opening their third and largest location at Lincoln and Southport Avenues. At this very location, they’ll have a community café. So to celebrate the Grand Opening, they’re holding this fun and unique cupcake eating contest you just won’t want to miss!

The cupcake eating contest is open for both children and adults. It starts at 2 p.m. on Saturday. It is timed, so enjoy those sweet treats – quickly! Prizes for “most creative eater” from the delicious gourmet burger place Kuma’s Corner and also the tattoo shops, The Alley and Taylor Street Tattoo.

The Bleeding Heart Bakery is home to lots of yummy cupcakes, including “Plain Jane chocolate raspberry” vegan cupcakes, “Fancy Schmancy ginger mint mojito” cupcakes and other sweet and unique treats. The bakery offers gluten-free, soy-free and other types of treats that are sure to please distinctive palates or those with allergies or other needs.

What a great contest! Good luck to all of those Chicago cupcake lovers!

Source: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/redeye-wrigleyville/2010/07/wrigleyville-biz-spot-bleeding-heart-bakery-coming-soon-to-lakeview.html

Share with friends

photo credit: Don’t Lose Your Lunch

Valentine’s Day is the time to celebrate the beauty of love and relationships. Whether you are married or dating, presenting your significant other with a vegan Valentine’s Day cupcake is a great way of making the day more eco-friendly. The usual options of flowers and candy are great, of course, but cupcakes are also perfect for the holiday. They are cute, delicious, and beautifully designed.

Vegan cupcakes don’t have any ingredients that were derived from animals. Therefore, these cupcakes won’t contain milk, butter or eggs. However, with a bit of advance planning, you can make sure these cupcakes are still delicious.

Nothing says romance like a homemade touch. Your significant other will know that you went the extra mile to create something special for Valentine’s Day. If you are making your own vegan cupcakes for Valentine’s Day, there are plenty of recipes that you can easily find online.

Instead of the eggs, you will usually be replacing flax seeks or silken tofu. The flax seeds need to be ground finely and then you simply need to beat in some water. This process gives the flax seeds a gooey quality that will make them a great substitution for eggs. You can also use silken tofu instead of eggs. The ratio is about ¼ of a cup tofu to equal one egg. Many people who make vegan cupcakes will also choose to use a banana. To make the correct quantity for one egg, use about ½ a banana.

So what about the other traditional cupcake ingredients of milk and butter? Milk can be substituted with soymilk, or rice milk. Even almond milk will do the trick. Instead of butter, you can use margarine. The quantity would be ¼ teaspoon of margarine standing in for ½ a cup of butter. Canola oil can also stand in for butter. Simply reduce the amount that you would need of the butter. You need slightly less oil that you would have needed butter.

As far as cupcake flavors go, nearly all of them will work for Valentine’s Day. Popular choices are chocolate cupcakes, or strawberry cupcakes. After all, pink is a popular color for Valentine’s Day.

Now that you have some idea of what ingredients can be substituted to make vegan cupcakes, you can try some decorating. Typically, you want some sort of pink or red decorations on your Valentine’s Day cupcakes. You can make a chocolate or vanilla cupcake and give it pink or red frosting and it automatically starts to look more suitable for Valentine’s Day.

You can really get creative on Valentine’s Day and decorate your vegan cupcakes with smiles, heart shapes, flower designs, and even “X” and “O” symbols. If you have a batch of cupcakes ready, you can decorate each one differently with different shades of pinks and reds and different hearts. Some other great decorative touches for vegan cupcakes for Valentine’s Day would be to add chocolate frosting with pink embellishments or pink frosting with coconut.

Just remember since your cupcakes are vegan, make sure that not only are there no animal products in your cakes, but also none in your frosting. Remember the frosting should have no eggs, milk or butter, so make sure you replace these animal products with one of the ingredients mentioned above. If your significant other is a vegan, and you go out of your way to make vegan cupcakes for Valentine’s Day, you can be sure that your efforts will be truly appreciated

Share with friends

These green tea and ginger cupcakes by rwarren69 would go great with a warm beverage on a cold winter day. The tea cup is made using a chocolate mold and sits above lemon icing. Love the idea of making healthy cupcakes or healthier cupcakes

Share with friends

If you are planning a big meal for the holidays with family and friends, you should always pay some attention to the needs of vegetarians or vegans. If you have non-meat eating guests attending, remember that they will also be hungry, in the holiday spirit and prepared to eat! While vegetarians avoid eating animals, vegans avoid food that was derived from an animal in any way. That means that you will need to prepare a course, side and dessert that has no animal protein, cheese, milk or even honey.

Picture: Vegan chocolate cupcakes with atomic fireball by Kelly Sue

It should come as no surprise that if you have a vegan coming over, and all of the food you have prepared is full of ingredients derived from animals, your vegan friend is likely to leave your get-together hungry and maybe even a bit depressed. After all, just eating only a boring salad is no fun when everyone else is gorging on turkey, side dishes, and delicious desserts prepared with butter and milk!

When planning a holiday vegan meal, one great place to start is dessert! That way your vegan pals will leave your holiday meal in good spirits. There are many dessert favorites that can be remade with no dairy, including cupcakes. Vegan cupcakes are extremely easy to make. Unlike some desserts, it is really easy to substitute vegan ingredients into a cupcake. Most people who aren’t vegans will never know the difference between vegan cupcakes and regular cupcakes, as both are equally delicious.

Picture: Rocky road cupcake by Norwichnuts

If you already know how to make cupcakes, adapting your recipe for vegan cupcakes should be, well, “a piece of cake.” Instead of a standard shortening made with animal products, opt for a vegan shortening. A popular shortening to choose which works great in vegan cupcakes is called Earth Balance. To replace milk or cream, substitute soymilk, rice milk or almond milk in your vegan cupcakes. You can find some great ideas for recipes with a simple web search of “vegan cupcakes.” There are also some creative books on the subject such as Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Once you have the basics of your vegan cupcake ready, now is the time to make your vegan cupcakes into holiday cupcakes. This means lots of creativity and great decorations. This is where the real fun begins.

One easy idea for holiday vegan cupcakes is to make a fluffy white frosting for the top of the cupcake. The frosting will look like snow. Once your snow is in place, you can decorate these cupcakes with little green Christmas trees, Santa’s and images of gifts. These cute adornments can also be bought at the store. (Just make sure that they don’t have dairy products in them.)

Picture: Gingerbread vegan cupcakes by statelyenglishmanor

Another great idea for a vegan cupcake for the holidays is to make a gingerbread vegan cupcake. This is an innovative treat based on the classic idea of a gingerbread man or gingerbread house, which everyone knows is popular around the holidays. If you serve your guests gingerbread vegan cupcakes, they won’t miss the dairy one bit!

If you want to get even more advanced with your holiday vegan cupcakes, you can shape the cupcakes themselves like popular holiday icons. For example, you can quickly build a snowman cupcake or Rudolph cupcake. These cupcakes can even be three-dimensional and take the cupcake shape to a whole new level. All of these things can be accomplished with a vegan cupcake. The holidays are a great excuse to experiment!

Share with friends

photo credit: norwichnuts

I am hoping to find the recipe for this amazing vegan cupcake. Make me want to just reach through the screen and take a bite. Here is a link to the recipe by Janet Hudson for these Vegan Blueberry Blue Curacao Cupcakes. Thank you Janet!

Share with friends