One-minute Vegan Microwave Black Forest Cupcakes

Yes, you read it right! These cupcakes get done in a minute. They’re vegan. They can be made in the Microwave. And they’re Black Forest cupcakes at that. Beat that! I must say, one of my most successful experiments born on one heck of a super-rainy, super-gloomy, super-cozy afternoon. Not being the kind to take such time out to nap (I can see some of you raising your eyebrows to this and thinking I’m nuts, but yes, I strictly save my afternoon siestas only for the weekends), and having watched the rain long enough to have gotten bored of that as well, I ended up donning my apron and heading to the kitchen. Put on some nice music while I could still hear the pitter-patter of the rain all around me, and I was good to go. The ambience was set, the ingredients were all available in my pantry, the power supply board wasnt playing spoil-sport…oh, I was a happy baker-woman alright 🙂 And when these cuppie cake babies were done, did I do a little jig or what? You can be sure I did more than one 😉 Having said all that, I must admit I had a much bigger and better reason to be making these delicious babies. I was meeting a special vegan friend later in the day, and I simply had to put something together for her. Want to know who that is? I’m sure you do! Y’all should know SunshineMom of Tongue-ticklers. Yeah, so she happened to be in town, and we’d decided to meet later that day. All the vegans out there, you must totally head to her space…she has wonderful, magical creations churning out of her cook-pot.

One-minute Vegan Microwave Black Forest Cupcakes

Ingredients:

For the Cupcakes

• All purpose flour/Maida – 3/4 cup
• Cocoa – 1/4 cup
• Brown Sugar – 3/4 cup (If you don’t have brown sugar or if procuring it is tough, just go ahead and use normal white sugar).
• Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
• Baking Soda – 1/4 tsp
• Salt – a pinch
• Flax seed powder – 2 tsps mixed in 1/2 cup warm water
• Warm Water – 1/4 cup ( This is in addition to the 1/2 cup of warm water for the flax seeds)
• Oil – 1/4 cup
• Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

For the Frosting:

• Non-dairy whipping Cream – 3/4 cup (I used GoldTop)
• Maraschino cherries – 15 nos
• Cherry Syrup/Freshly squeezed Orange juice/Home-made Sugar Syrup –1/4 cup (Since the cupcakes are sweet enough by themselves, we wont be using any added sugar with the cherry syrup/orange juice. If you are using home-made sugar syrup, use not more than 2-3 tbsps sugar. The whole idea is to moisten the cupcakes, not sweeten them anymore. I used freshly-squeezed orange juice).
• Rum (optional) – 1 tbsp, to be added to the cherry syrup (I didn’t use any, but feel free to dunk some in your syrup, and get all tipsy…hic!)
• Dark Chocolate Bar – a small bit, grated (I used Chocolate Vermicelli)

Note: This proportion makes 15 standard-sized cupcakes.

Procedure:

• Line your silicon muffin cups with paper liners and set aside. (I used individual silicon muffin cups).
• Take a bowl and add all the dry ingredients to it – maida, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt (Yeah, no sifting…this is as easy-peasy as it gets!)
• Add the sugar, stir well with a balloon whisk to incorporate.
• Stir in the warm water, oil, vanilla essence and the flaxseed powder-warm water mixture. Mix well. The batter must have a ribbon-like consistency now.
• Pour the batter into the readied silicon moulds. Pour the batter only about halfway up the moulds. I spooned 2 tbsps into each mould.
• Now cook the cupcakes on high for a minute, or till done (My microwave sets to 900W at high power. Please check yours and increase the time by a minute or two, as required). I did mine in batches of 4 cupcakes each.
• Give the cupcakes a standing time of 10-15 seconds and put them through the toothpick test to check if its done well. The cupcakes should be soft and springy to touch when done. If they’re too firm, they’re overdone, and if you try biting into them once they’ve cooled, they could be so hard as to even break your teeth. So keep checking every 10 seconds or so, unless you’re secretly in love with your dentist! Once you do one batch, you’d be able to confidently set the timer on the successive batches.
• Once done, remove from the microwave and let the cupcakes cool in the moulds for a couple minutes. Remove from the silicon moulds, turn onto a wire-rack and let cool completely before you can do the frosting.
• Poke short, small holes on top of each cupcake – about 5-6 holes on each cupcake should work just fine. And don’t go all the way to the bottom with the holes. Remember, the rock bottom’s paper, and you don’t want that getting soggy. Half-way down should work.
• Pour about 1 tsp of the cherry syrup/sugar syrup/orange juice on top of each cupcake (that is all it can hold).
• Now coming to the frosting, you should have chilled the whipping cream for at least 10-12 hours in the refrigerator. Also chilled the beater blades and bowl in which you plan to whip the cream, about 1/2 hour atleast. Stainless steel bowls work best for this.
• Whip the cream on high for about 3-4 minutes, to a hard-peak stage (if you make a peak with a spoon, the peak should stay longer than 5 seconds).
• Pipe the whipped cream in a swirly pattern onto each cupcake with a star nozzle.
• Sit a plump cherry in the centre of each cupcake and sprinkle some chocolate vermicelli/grated chocolate, and voila!
• Wait, don’t gobble them just yet. Refrigerate the babies for about half an hour before serving. Trust me when I say that it will only taste better if you do. Let the flavours get to know each other a little bit. They need to get ready for the big moment when you bite into them. And its all for your own good. You gotta treat those taste-buds well right? 😉

I made 2 batches of these cupcakes. By that, I mean I made 30 of them. Apart from sharing them with SunshineMom, I also shared some with my neighbours, and sent the remaining cuppie cake babies to the hubby’s workplace for them to gorge on while they slogged their butts out. You should make 30 cupcakes and share them with everyone around you too! The joy of sharing is absolutely un-paralleled. Period 🙂

Needless to say, this is going straight to my ‘Chocolate Fest‘ and sitting right at the centre, winking at you all, teasing you. So, have you had your share of chocolate today yet? You haven’t? Go, go, go…make some of these piquant, yet sooper-easy-to-fix cuppie cakes. You so deserve them!

If you want to make the big-mamma, ie the regular Black Forest Gateau, you can find the recipe here.

Before I wrap up this post, just a small note to SunshineMom: Though I’ve spoken to a lot many bloggers on the phone/IM, nothing quite like meeting the face behind a space in person! You’re the second blogger I’ve met and it was wonderful meeting you even if it was for a short while. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet up. Next time around, I’d love to have you over at my pad if you can make it 😀