Vegan Chocolate and Coconut Cupcakes

I've been wanting to get into vegan baking for a while. I have no experience of it really but it looked simple enough and had seen loads of promising reviews of vegan recipes. I have a couple of friends who are vegan/strict vegetarian and so I thought I'd help them out and find some recipes that they could appreciate. I must say I had my doubts as I was mixing the cake batter as it looked really wet but they actually came out a treat.

I bought myself the vegan cupcake book that has been doing the rounds; Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. It's a cute little book with loads of recipes for all kinds of cupcakes and frostings with no animal products. The recipes seem easy to follow and while some contain ingredients you may not have lying around, plenty of them use everyday ingredients or are easy to modify to fit what you have in the cupboards. I actually modified the recipe for these cupcakes as I didn't have a couple of things and they still came out wonderfully. The cupcakes were moist and store really well in an airtight container for several days.

This recipe is based on the Toasted Coconut Cupcakes from VCTOTW book but I will post it here as I made some modifications.

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp creamed coconut, grated
1/2 cup desiccated coconut

For the glaze
2 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup coconut milk

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 12 hole muffin pan with liners.
In a medium bowl, soft together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
In another bowl mix together the coconut milk, oil, sugar, vanilla, creamed coconut and oil. Stir to combine.
Add the flour mixture in batches and beat thoroughly after each addition to ensure the batter is smooth. Fold in the desiccated coconut.
Fill the liners two thirds full and bake for around 25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely before glazing.
Sift the icing sugar into a medium bowl and add the coconut milk. Mix thoroughly until smooth and then pipe onto the cold cakes using a sandwich bag with a small hole cut from one corner.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World is available from Amazon