Chai Latte Cupcakes!

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This cute little book is quickly becoming one of my faves.

First thing: I love cupcakes.

Second thing: I love Chai Lattes.

So it was a no brainer when I decided to give these a whirl. Here's the recipe, if you'd like to try them. They're quaint and light...you can taste the "healthy" in them (as opposed to cakey, full-of-frosting cupcakes), but it's a YUMMY kind of "healthy". My husband, who is nothing close to a Vegan OR a Vegetarian, thought they were delicious.

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk or rice milk

4 black tea bags or 2 tablespoons loose black tea

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 cup vanilla or plain soy yogurt (I didn't have any, I subbed silken tofu)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Pinch to 1/8 teaspoon ground white or black pepper

For topping:

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg or ground mace

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and line muffin pan with cupcake liners.

2. Heat soy milk in a small saucepan over medium till almost boiling. Add tea bags, cover, and remove from heat. Let sit for 10 minutes. When ready, dunk teabags a few times in soy milk and squeeze gently to extract any soy milk before removing. Discard tea bags. Measure the soy milk/tea mixture and add more soy milk if it is less than 1 cup.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together oil, yogurt, sugar, vanilla, and tea mixture until all yogurt lumps disappear. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and pepper into wet ingredients. Mix until large lumps disappear; some small lumps are okay. Fill tins full and bake about 20 to 22 minutes until a sharp knife inserted comes out clean.

4. Make sure cupcakes are completely cool before adding toping, or sugar will melt and not look pretty and powdery.

To assemble:

If desired, prepare a stencil to make pretty designs on the top of the cupcakes. (I wasn't feeling artsy enough to try this...maybe next time). Or you can just go ahead and sprinkle it on anarchy-style (my method, of course). Either way, sift confectioners' sugar over cooled cakes first. Then mix together cocoa, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a small bowl. Sift mixture onto each cupcake with or without stencil. Enjoy, but don't wear black when eating these babies!