Russian Doll Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

Regular readers of my blog will remember that my birthday cake this year was shaped like a Russian doll. As one of my friends is vegan I made these vegan Russian doll sugar cookies but I also wanted there to be some cake she could eat, so I made some vegan cupcakes to go with it. I found some Russian doll edible ricepaper pictures online and thought they would be really cute on the top of cupcakes.

I used this recipe for a vegan chocolate cake from a website called Instructables.com. It claims to be the best chocolate cake ever, that just happens to be vegan - it did taste amazing!

You need:

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1 cup caster sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup warm water

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp distilled white or apple cider vinegar - though I didn't have any and used white wine vinegar and it turned out great.

For the buttercream:

Vegan margarine eg Pure, Vitalite

Vegan dark chocolate

Icing sugar

To make the cake, mix the dry ingredients

Then add the wet ingredients, beating after each addition. Pretty simple really!

Spoon into cupcake cases - I got 11 out of this mixture

Bake for 15-20 mins at 180C. They are ready when they are risen but still springy to the touch.

I bought Kinnerton dark chocolate as it was in the gluten-free/vegan/special diet section of Sainsburys and I had read that its chocolate was vegan. However, I've since realised that a lot of plain chocolate is vegan and that there's no need to buy a specialist brand. Still, this seemed a decent bar of chocolate. I melted it in the microwave though you could use a bain-marie if you prefer.

Cream the vegan margarine (I used Vitalite) with enough icing sugar until you get the right consistency then add the melted chocolate. If it's too runny you might then need to add more icing sugar. I don't tend to use set quantities when I make buttercream and just add enough icing sugar until I get the mixture as stiff as I want.

Pipe swirls onto the top of the cupcakes. I used red metallic cupcake cases (though can't remember where I bought them) as I thought they would work well with the Russian theme. The cases held their shape and colour really well and looked good.

I bought this piece of rice paper online; I had to cut out around the dolls myself but that didn't take long. The paper was fairly thick so I knew the dolls would be able to stand up by themselves on the top of each cupcake.

Here's what I mean

And here are all the cupcakes in one of my many cake stands. They looked pretty good alongside the main cake and were so popular that by the time I went over to try one, there was only one left!