Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]

Contents

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]Ingredients You Need for Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]How to Prepare Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

These vegan Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes are very dark and intense, not for the faint-hearted. Devour at your own risk! If all the melted dark chocolate is too much for you, try using (vegan) milk chocolate, or perhaps you could substitute cocoa powder for the chocolate bars, but you’ll have to adjust the amount of wet ingredients.

If you can get your hands on some cherry extract – great, use it! I could not find any in my local supermarkets and my attempt at combining fresh cherry juice with the ganache was a complete and utter failure.

I also recommend you use, specifically, cake-covering chocolate bars for the ganache; regular chocolate bars just won’t melt properly with the cream. When preparing the ganache, the chocolate should become silky and shiny, not grainy. If it looks more like the latter, it hasn’t melted properly, or it has burnt. Please follow the instructions for melting very carefully. Chocolate making (and melting) is an accurate science!

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]

Ingredients You Need for Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]

For the Cakes

2.5 cups self-raising flour
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp brown sugar
1 cup almond milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup good quality dark chocolate
1.5 cups cherries, half of them pitted (or 30 cherries)

For the Chocolate Ganache

1/3 cup soy cream
1 cup cake covering dark chocolate
icing sugar (optional; I didn’t use any)

How to Prepare Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes [Vegan]

For the Cakes

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/356ºF.
Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar. In a separate container, combine the almond milk and apple cider vinegar and let them curdle for a little bit.
Boil some water in a small pot and place a glass/plexiglass bowl over it. Break up the chocolate into small bits and let it melt over the hot water; this way, it won’t burn. When it’s silky and shiny, it’s ready to be mixed in with the flour, along with the curdled milk.
Spoon the batter into 12–15 lined cupcake tins, placing a pitted cherry in the centre and making sure it’s covered by the batter.
Bake in the oven for 23–25 minutes.

For the Chocolate Ganache

Heat the soya cream in a small pan until it starts boiling; at that point, remove from heat and drop in the chocolate, broken into small pieces. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon until it is perfectly melted.
When the cupcakes have cooled completely and the ganache has cooled a little bit (it should still be liquid, don’t put it in the fridge) spoon the ganache on top of the cupcakes and decorate with a whole cherry.