Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes?

I decided to try my first recipe from the page-a-day calendar – the vegan chocolate cupcake. Although I don’t get the whole vegan thing (dairy cows are in pain when not milked regularly, and hens will lay eggs regardless of fertilization potential. And there seem to be a lot of options for free range, etc) I was intrigued by cupcakes made without butter and eggs. The recipe calls for applesauce and vinegar(?!) and I wasn’t sure how these cupcakes would turn out, but was curious so I whipped them up.

From the cupcake calender (and the book 500 Cupcakes, published by Sellers Publishing, Inc.)

Before I begin, I should mention that there are “fake” vegan – I wasn’t sure where to find vegan chocolate chips, so I just used normal ones. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer, but you can probably mix these cupcakes by hand because the batter is very runny. The 20 minutes baking time was exactly right for my oven. The only thing that was off for this recipe was the number of cupcakes it makes. I made 1.5 dozen regular-sized cupcakes and 12 minis.

These cupcakes are pretty good. I really like the chocolate chips in them, so I might do that occasionally when making “normal” chocolate cupcakes. They are fairly moist and there is a faint apple taste which I liked. My biggest complaint with these are that they stick to the wrappers quite a bit, which is a pain, especially with the minis. Maybe cutting out some water and adding some vegetable oil would solve this?

If I had all the ingredients hanging around my kitchen (I don’t usually have applesauce, and I wouldn’t buy it special for this) I’d make these cupcakes again. They won’t replace my regular chocolate cupcakes recipe, but they gave me an idea of the cocoa/chocolate chip substitution for my regular recipe if I’m out of chocolate squares. I do wish the calendar provided calorie information because I would make the switch to the vegan recipe if it ended up being fewer calories per cupcake. I also wondered why they used a lot of sugar instead of honey, and a quick Google search showed me that there is some controversy over whether honey should be considered vegan or not.

Overall, I’d rate these cupcakes 7/10 and will add them to my cookbook.

Here’s a photo of my cupcakes. I added the icing because I had a little hanging out in my fridge, but it isn’t vegan.

UPDATE: I stored my extra cupcakes in the freezer, and after thawing the liner magically peels off!