Eat Like You Mean It!

Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberry Filling and Strawberry/Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting

This is what’s on the dessert m enu tomorrow!  Friday is Midsummer - a very popular Swedish holiday - so the bf and I are heading to his parents’ house to celebrate in style and enjoy some good company.  Unfortunately, the majority of Swedish holidays are an absolute nightmare for vegans (in terms of food - the other aspects are really lovely), as pretty much every dish has some sort of animal or animal product as its base.  The traditional Midsummer meal consists mainly of pickled/smoked herring from a jar (the smell is just…so…sooooo bad), meatballs fried in butter, a type of sausage similar to a hotdog, sour cream, boiled potatoes with dill, and vanilla cake covered in whipped cream and strawberries.  Luckily for me, however, I love to cook, so holidays are just an opportunity to create my own little vegan feast and hopefully share some tasty vegan food with some skeptical carnivores.

Anyways, for these gorgeous gems, I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe from Chef Chloe’s Raspberry Tiramisu Cupcakes.  For the filling, I modified her raspberry sauce (strawberries instead of raspberries, no vanilla or cinnamon), and I altered her butter cream by substituting the water and liquor for some pure raw strawberry puree.  I’m really proud of how pretty they turned out :).

I can NOT stop raving about how delicious these cupcakes are, and I guarantee that they will satisfy any hard-core omnivore’s sweet tooth!  While these are by no means healthy, it’s sometimes best, in my experience, to introduce skeptics to vegan food with desserts that are easily palatable and completely indistinguishable from their creamy counterparts.  Give these a try next time you have an urge to bake something, and let me know how they turn out! 

All the best! :)