We interrupt our regular broadcast to bring you One Bowl! Vegan! Double Chocolate! Fudge Frosted! Cupcakes!

Sounds like a complete mouthful I know, and these actually are, in a delicious way. I made these the other day when in a cupcake kind of mood. Cupcake moods are defined by that instance you look in the baking drawer and discover you have way too many cupcake liners in colours you don’t ever recall wanting or buying. Orange, fire engine red and green polka dot, to name a few.

Not long after baking these, I started to notice vegan chocolate cake recipes popping up all over the internet and realised that not only are there a lot of said recipes out there, but like mine, they are pretty much all the same with minor variations in the type of sugar used or the ratio of vegetable oil to flour and cocoa powder.

Around this time, I also read an article where a chef claimed to have pioneered a technique used in a particular dish. Quite amusing when it’s obviously untrue, but since so many prize originality above all things, it seems almost expected that the wheel should be reinvented on a regular basis.

In an effort to reduce clutter, this is one less vegan chocolate cake recipe. The frosting is made with bittersweet chocolate, water, custard powder, brown sugar, cocoa powder and malt.

This week, I’m counting down a little nervously to the day I start whipping up a huge batch of these cupcakes for a friend’s wedding. I’ve baked in bulk before, but never at home with a pint sized mixer and a single oven. For weeks now, I’ve been worrying over the little things that could possibly go wrong, including the amount of time I will have to make these, as I’m trying to fit it in, inbetween work and other commitments. Mind you, I’m extremely excited about the task and can’t wait to get stuck into the cake-baking and buttercream-mixing. In the meantime, I have cartons and cartons of eggs on my kitchen counter, a dining table taken over by a mountain of packing boxes, a fridge full of butter blocks and containers of chocolate ganache, and I’m half way through assembling the presentation/cutting cake. Fingers crossed, this whole operation is going to turn out as smoothly and as sweetly as….. vanilla bean buttercream.