Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

Ellecupcake blogged earlier this month about coconut cupcakes adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I was a vegetarian years ago before I was married, but never vegan. Anyway, I got the cookbook from the library. The chocolate mint looked really good, and when my daughter asked for them today, I figured it was a good excuse to try a vegan recipe :) I'll note though that I just used my regular pantry stuff. Honestly, I don't even know how to tell if some stuff is vegan or not. So regular flour, sugar, vanilla, soda, powder, cocoa, and vanilla soymilk (since that's what we had).

I was excited at how easily and quickly these came together, all with a whisk and a fork. Not having to pull out the mixer (stand or hand). Not having to wait for my eggs or butter to be room temp. And not having to worry about disinfecting after eggs was nice, too :).

I would not be able to tell the difference between these (the basic chocolate cupcake) and any other oil-based cupcake. I have no idea how they rise (I'm guessing it has to do with the vinegar and baking soda?), but they have a fine texture. The family loved them.

For the icings, I should have been thinking more than just following the numbers in the recipe. You can see my buttercream is way too thin. I just mixed it up and instead of checking if I needed more powdered sugar, I just put it in the piping bag. I had the same problem with the ganache - it turned out more like Hershey's syrup. The cupcakes looked a little better before the ganache, but not much :)
I still like the idea of the chocolate-mint, and like the mocha one earlier this week, I like the flavored buttercream with a thin layer of dark ganache matched with the chocolate cupcake. I'm sure I'll be making these again!