Rich Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes

Many peo­ple would as­sume that any­thing both ve­g­an AND gluten-free must be about as de­li­cious as card­board. Get ready for shock and awe, peo­ple, as we pre­sent a cup­cake recipe that will.. Blow. Your. Mind!

Cup­cake Mix:

1½ cups Self-Rais­ing Gluten-Free Flour (we used Laucke Easy Bak­ers Spe­cial White Gluten-Free flour, avai­l­able in the health sec­tion of many su­per­mar­kets)
1 cup Cas­tor Su­gar
3 ta­ble­spoons Veg­etable Oil
1 ta­ble­spoon Egg Sub­sti­tute (eg. No Egg) mixed with 3 ta­ble­spoons Wa­ter
½ cup Nut­telex (or other ve­g­an mar­garine)
                                                   

2 tea­spoons Vanil­la Ex­tract/Essence
¾ cup Soy Milk
½ cup Des­si­cat­ed Co­conut

Cho­co­late Cof­fee Ic­ing:

2½ cups Ic­ing Su­gar
¾ cup Nut­telex
3 tea­spoons Vanil­la Ex­tract/Essence
3 ta­ble­spoons hot Fair-trade Cof­fee
7 ta­ble­spoons Raw Ca­cao Pow­der OR 2 ta­ble­spoons Fair-trade Co­coa

SERVES: 20 cup­cakes  PREP: 30min  COOK­ING: 30min

Pre­pa­ra­tion

Pre­heat your oven to 180C.

Toast the co­conut in a fry pan over low heat, stir­ring reg­u­lar­ly un­til just gol­d­en.

Com­bine all in­gre­di­ents and mix us­ing an elec­tric mix­er un­til thor­ough­ly blend­ed and slight­ly fluf­fy.

Place cup­cake pa­pers in­to a cup­cake pan and drop a gener­ous, heaped ta­ble­spoon of mix­ture in­to each cup­cake pa­per so they are filled close to, but not quite to the top.

Bake in the oven for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes, or un­til gol­d­en and a skew­er comes out clean when poked in­to one of the cakes.

Al­low the cakes to cool for 15 min­utes and then trans­fer them to a wire rack and al­low to com­plete­ly cool be­fore ic­ing.

Ic­ing the Cup­cakes

Com­bine all of the ic­ing in­gre­di­ents in a bowl and beat with an elec­tric mix­er un­til the ic­ing is com­plete­ly blend­ed and looks shiny.

Fit a pip­ing bag with a wide star-shaped noz­zle and fill the bag with ic­ing.

In one mo­tion, pipe the ic­ing on­to a cup­cake, start­ing from the out­side spi­ral­ing in, and then pipe up and around, with an ex­tra squirt at the end to form a tip.

Store in an airtight con­tain­er un­til ready to en­joy.

Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes

If you don’t feel like mak­ing your own cup­cakes and you live in Mel­bourne, try Mis­ter Nice Guy Ve­g­an Cup­cakes. They have an as­tound­ing range of de­li­cious flavours and use on­ly or­gan­ic, fair-trade in­gre­di­ents. For more in­for­ma­tion you can read our ar­ti­cle about them or vis­it www.mis­ter­n­iceguy.com.au

Mister Nice Guy Vegan Cupcakes

We were very excit­ed to learn that Aus­tralia has                                                    

a new ve­g­an cup­cake en­ter­prise, Mis­ter Nice Guy. So we sat down with hus­band and wife own­ers Lu­cas and Deb for a se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about all things cup­cake (of course it wasn’t a thin­ly veiled ex­cuse to sam­ple some of their de­li­cious new prod­ucts *cough cough*)

Can you tell us a lit­tle about your­selves and how you came to start up Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes?

Deb Ev­ery­one shows their love in dif­fer­ent ways; Lu­cas shows his when he bakes. The first week I met Lu­cas he made me an Up­side-Down Pineap­ple cake, a Straw­ber­ry Short­cake, Mex­i­can Corn­bread and Jam­bal­aya, I fell in love with him very quick­ly and ev­er since then he’s just kept feed­ing me.

Cup­cake mas­ter­minds Lu­cas and Deb

Lu­cas That’s right! That’s the way it’s done. I LOVE bak­ing and cook­ing. I’ve been bak­ing since I was about 11 years old. My fa­ther didn’t want me to have su­gar when I was a lit­tle kid be­cause they thought I had AD­HD (new studies show that lit­tle kids have lots of en­er­gy be­cause they are lit­tle kids). I end­ed up go-                                                    

-­ing to live with my great aunt Nan­cy when I was around 11 years old and I knew that she didn’t know about the rule of no su­gar, so when I came home from school I would open her cook books and start bak­ing cakes and whole trays of cookies my­self. It was heav­en on earth!

I nev­er stopped bak­ing and here I am now do­ing what I love to do. That’s why the cup­cakes are so good!

What’s the sto­ry be­hind your name, and shouldn’t it be Mis­ter and Mrs Nice guy?

Deb We al­ways had the idea of start­ing up a cup­cake busi­ness even­tu­al­ly; it was just a mat­ter of when. I’m a graph­ic de­sign­er and was giv­en a job de­sign­ing a shop sign for an old timey bar­ber which I de­cid­ed to name ‘Mis­ter Cuts’.The lo­go I cre­at­ed was a mous­tache and scis-                                                    

-­sors. I re­al­ly liked it and kept play­ing around with the colours and de­cid­ed not to use it for that job in the end, but kept it for my­self in­stead for some rea­son…

Mis­ter Cho­co­late cup­cakes

The next night we went to a                                                    

friend’s par­ty and Lu­cas made some ve­g­an cup­cakes, peo­ple there kept telling us that we should start our own busi­ness be­cause they were so de­li­cious, then when we went home and I worked on the lo­go again for Mis­ter Cuts – it just clicked that Mis­ter Nice Guy would be a per­fect name if we ev­er de­cid­ed to start our own busi­ness.

This was on­ly three months ago. It was re­al­ly weird be­cause things just start­ed falling in­to place and lit­er­al­ly within a few weeks, we had the name, the flavours and the style in mind and Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes was born.

As for the Mrs Nice Guy- I want­ed to be Ma­dame Awe­some at one stage but it didn’t have the same ring to it as Mis­ter Nice Guy. Maybe one day I’ll bring out some Ma­dame Awe­some Cookies or some­thing and kick Lu-                                                    

-­cas’s butt.

One of the great things about your cup­cakes, aside from the fact that they taste amaz­ing, is that you go to great lengths to en­sure that all your in­gre­di­ents are ve­g­an and eth­i­cal­ly sourced. Was it dif­fi­cult to cre­ate a range of eth­i­cal and de­li­cious cup­cakes, and if so what are some of the chal­lenges you faced?

Lu­cas The biggest chal­lenge was to find out how ve­g­an bak­ing works. I’ve al­ways baked but learn­ing how to bake ve­g­an meant learn­ing how to bake all over again. It took sev­er­al months, but once I fig­ured that out- it was just a mat­ter of what kind of flours and su­gars worked best and tast­ed best- in the end it was al­ways or­gan­ic. Luck­i­ly, we live in Mel­bourne where there are so many ve­g­ans and                                                    

Yes please.

cru­el­ty-free stores, it gave us im­me­di­ate ac­cess to what we                                                    

need­ed, and thanks to this we dis­cov­ered that there are a lot of in­gre­di­ents in our cup­cakes that are good for you, like co­conut oil and Hi­malayan salt and Raw Ca­cao pow­der. Plus Mel­bourne has a great ve­g­an com­mu­ni­ty and we sensed that there was a need for ve­g­an cup­cakes and we felt we had to do it.

Another chal­lenge that I’ve faced is that I have come across peo­ple say­ing that some food items have been or­gan­ic but on­ly be­cause of mon­ey and not be­cause they are ac­tu­al­ly or­gan­ic. So that is on the top of our list of things to sort out. Deb and I are ac­tivists in many dif­fer­ent ar­eas and if some­one is go­ing around cer­ti­fy­ing food items as be­ing or­gan­ic and from sus­tain­able sources we are go­ing to hold them to it and find out whether they are or not.

Fresh off the pro­duc­tion line

You have a large range of cup­cakes on of­fer, rang­ing from tra­di­tio­n­al favou­rites like the cho­co­late and vanil­la, to slight­ly less tra­di­tio­n­al of­fer­ings such as the fuzzy ewok, red hot rid­ing hood, and zom­bie brains. what                                                    

are a few of your favou­rites and why?

Lu­cas I love the Peanut But­ter Cup as well as the Lazy Way Lane cup­cake. I used to sell co­conuts to tourists on Lazy Way Lane in Key West Flori­da, it was a great lit­tle hus­tle I had be­cause the co­conuts were free and the tourists had to walk by me to get to the shops!

So I would just sit there and sell them $5 cold and $3 warm, and for a few dol­lars more when they came back through I would cut them open and make a spoon out of the husk so they could eat the co­conut in­side. That was an awe­some job and the tourists loved it!

Deb Fuzzy Ewok is my favou­rite, I want­ed so bad­ly to name one of them Ewok, I kept sneak­i­ly throw­ing it in there. Then we dis­cov­ered the best Vegie Burg­ers at a                                                    

café called Em­pire Strikes Back Café who now stock our cup­cakes, so the name Fuzzy Ewok is stay­ing for good.

Al­so, the Zom­bie Brain Cup­cake rocks! Lu­cas frosts it in a way that it looks like a brain… mmm … de­li­cious!

What sort of re­ac­tions have you had so far, from both ve­g­ans and non ve­g­ans?

Lu­cas Our first frost­ing was way too sweet. So I looked in­to a very old fashioned frost­ing recipe that us­es 75 pre­cent less su­gar and us­es flour in­stead. The re­sult was an amaz­ing­ly creamy and not too sweet frost­ing that ev­ery­one loves! I’m so grate­ful for feed­back from our cus­tomers be­cause it re­al­ly can in­flu­ence things for the bet­ter.

I’ve al­so heard peo­ple tell me that they laughed when they heard we were go­ing to be selling ve­g­an cup­cakes and said it would nev­er work. Then they said that peo­ple were com­ing in­to the café all week­end ask­ing about our                                                    

cup­cakes and that they had tons of busi­ness be­cause they were selling our cup­cakes in their café! So yeah it sur­pris­es non-ve­g­ans how great our cup­cakes ac­tu­al­ly taste and that’s what we’re try­ing to do – change that whole pre­con­cep­tion of ve­g­an food.

You’ve had stalls at a few fes­ti­vals and more and more cafes are start­ing to stock your cup­cakes. How can peo­ple find you if they want to try some of your cup­cake good­ness?

Deb They can vis­it the café’s we sup­p­ly which can be found on the in­fo tab on our face­book page, other­wise con­tact us di­rect, we de­liv­er for free within Mel­bourne CBD and the sur­round­ing area, plus we love to meet our cus­tomer’s face to face.

Orange cho­co­late cup­cake

What’s next for Mis­ter Nice Guy, are you plan­n­ing to take over the world, or at least Aus­tralia?

Deb We’d re­al­ly like to get our own bak­ery shop go­ing,                                                    

so that peo­ple can come in and hang out and eat cup­cakes all day, watch a movie or play some old school Nin­ten­do games. The whole point is to make peo­ple feel nos­tal­g­ic and make it a place where ev­ery­one is wel­come.

We’d love to see our cus­tomers and friends ev­ery day and a shop front would be great way to do that. Al­so if we were in a good lo­ca­tion we could get non-ve­g­an strays in off the street who just want to eat a cup­cake and won’t even re­al­ize it’s ve­g­an – and hope­ful­ly they’d start feel­ing more and more com­fort­able with ve­g­an food.

For all your or­gan­ic, fair trade, ve­g­an cup­cake needs check out the Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes web­site, or vis­it the Mis­ter Nice Guy face­book.

The Uproar Vegan Store

We’re thrilled to an­nounce that the new Up­roar On­line Store is all sys­tems go! Now you can get                                                    

low cost high qual­i­ty ve­g­an goodies with all pro­ceeds go­ing di­rect­ly to­wards help­ing an­i­mals!

We’re start­ing out with some fan­tas­tic prod­ucts in­clud­ing the Veg 1 mul­ti­vi­ta­min for­mu­lat­ed es­pe­cial­ly for ve­g­ans (at $15.95 for a three month sup­p­ly it’s al­most a steal), a long last­ing alu­minum free ve­g­an de­o­do­r­ant (‘Dusk‘ by Her­ban Cow­boy) that ac­tu­al­ly works, and a pea pro­tein pow­der which is ide­al for use in sports, weight con­trol or as a source of valu­able ami­no acids.

We’ll be ad­d­ing more prod­ucts over the com­ing weeks and hope to even­tu­al­ly be­come a one-stop-shop-till-you-drop cru­el­ty free on­line store. Keep check­ing back as we’ll be ad­d­ing more and more prod­ucts very soon – cho­co­lates, mock meats and ve­g­an cheese, egg re­plac­ers, nu­tri­tio­n­al yeast, whipped cream in a can, tee shirts,                                                    

stick­ers and much much more. Let us know your favou­rites and we’ll do our best to get them in.

We ship di­rect­ly to your door wher­ev­er you are in the world, and Vic­to­rians have the op­tion of pick­ing up their goods from our St Kil­da store­room. The best part is that all pro­ceeds go di­rect­ly to­wards our cam­paigns to help an­i­mals. So by shop­ping with us you’re not on­ly gett­ing great ve­g­an goods for su­per cheap prices, you’re help­ing save an­i­mals from abuse.

The Up­roar Store – Cru­el­ty Free, Eth­i­cal, Ve­g­an Shop­ping

Las Vegan Bakery

A Colling­wood in­sti­tu­tion, Las Ve­g­an Bak­ery is si­t­u­at­ed on Smith Street (up the Gertrude Street end), nes­tled in a quirky shop­ping strip that hosts a range of eclec­tic te­nants in­clud­ing a gallery, tat­too par­lour, art store and bou­tique pub. Las Ve­g­an is a quirky café with a re­laxed vibe that boasts funky fur­ni­ture, great mu­sic and of course de­li­cious food.

Renowned for their rice balls, which come served with dece­dent sa­tay sauce, bean shoots and a tas­ty sal­ad mix Las Ve­g­an cuts no corn­ers. Most im­pres­sive is the use of fresh herbs, which make the din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence es­pe­cial­ly me­m­orable. Tru­ly, Las Ve­g­an is an ex­ten­sion of my own kitchen, I am known for go­ing at least twice a                                                    

'Chick­en' Sch­nitzel with hand cut or­gan­ic chips at Las Ve­g­an Bak­ery

week, most re­cent­ly with my in-laws, who thor­ough­ly en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence.

The menu caters for a range of tastes, from health­ful soup, chil­li ‘non’ carne, cal­zones (lunch on­ly), slop­py joes and len­til burg­ers to the faux chick­en burg­er or nuggets, deep fried tem­peh and to­fu and the faux chick­en burg­er, all of which can be en­joyed whilst sip­ping on a Hen­ry of Har­court cider.

Savoury de­lights are not where it ends ei­ther, Michael bakes the most in­cred­i­ble muffins, brownies and cakes. So, if you have room at the end of your meal, which is high­ly un­like­ly with their gener­ous serv­ings, you may be able to fit one in with your bot­tom­less chai.

Open from 11am Tues­day through Fri­day, and un­til 9pm on Thurs­day and Fri­day nights (with Wed­nes­day on the cards too), Las Ve­g­an is a great place to get a bite to eat with friends,

Las Ve­g­an Bak­ery is lo­cat­ed at 22 Smith Street, Colling­wood, Vic­to­ria and can be reached for book­ings on (03) 9415 9001

Easy Creamy Cheesecake

You’ll be a con­vert to dairy-free deserts af­ter try­ing this creamy, sump­tu­ous cheese­cake. Use the ba­sic recipe to ex­per­i­ment with dif­fer­ent flavours – we’ve shown you le­mon and ber­ry va­ri­eties.

Base:

1/2 pack­et Arnotts Nice bis­cuits (or other ve­g­an va­ri­e­ty)
1 hand­ful of raw un­salt­ed Al­monds
1/2 cup Nuttlex (or other ve­g­an mar­garine)
1 spring-load­ed cake tin (the type that can open up to re­move the cake)

Filling:

1 tub Bet­ter Than Cream Cheese (227g)
200g soft to­fu
                                                   

1 tea­spoon vanil­la essence
200g gol­d­en syrup (or to taste)
1 tbl­spn po­ta­to flour (mix to paste with 2 tbl­spn cold wa­ter)
juice of one le­mon

For le­mon cheese­cake:

juice from 2 ex­tra le­mons

save one of the le­mon skins for grat­ing

For ber­ry cheese­cake:

1 pun­net of ber­ries (blue­ber­ries or rasp­ber­ries work well)

SERVES: 8  PREP: 30min  COOK­ING: 40min  COOL­ING: 2hrs

Le­mon Cheese­cake op­tion

Pre­par­ing the base

Turn on the oven to pre­heat to 180c.

Place the bis­cuits on a large chop­ping board and crush them with a rolling pin. The meal should be grit­ty and course.

Blend the al­monds in a blen­der un­til a fine meal and add                                                    

to the bis­cuits. Heat the mar­garine un­til run­ny (easi­est in the mi­crowave for a minute) and use on­ly as much as ne­ces­sary by gra­d­u­al­ly pour­ing and stir­ring in­to the bis­cuit mix­ture un­til the meal can be brought to­gether as a sticky crum­bling dough.

Coat mar­garine over the in­side of the spring-load­ed cake tin. Sprin­k­le enough mix­ture over the bot­tom of the tin to loose­ly cov­er it and then press the mix­ture down to form the base. Take clumps of the re­main­ing mix­ture and press half-way up the sides of the tin un­til the base is com­plete. Set aside.

Mak­ing the mix­ture

Pour the Bet­ter Than Cream Cheese and to­fu in­to a blen­der. Add the vanil­la essence and gol­d­en syrup and                                                    

blend. Mix the po­ta­to flour with 2 tbl­spns wa­ter to form a run­ny paste and add to the mix­ture. Juice the le­mon and pour through a strain­er in­to the mix­ture. If you’re mak­ing the le­mon cheese­cake, add the ex­tra le­mon juice now too. Blend the mix­ture un­til smooth and creamy.

If you’re mak­ing the ber­ry cheese­cake, add the ber­ries (don’t blend).

Pour the mix­ture in­to the cake tin and base. If you’re mak­ing the le­mon cheese­cake, sprin­k­le fine­ly grat­ed le­mon rind over the en­tire top of the mix­ture.

Place the cheese­cake in the 180c pre­heat­ed oven and bake un­til it’s changed colour on top and looks set in the cen­ter – ap­prox 40min. To check, wob­ble the tin slight­ly and the top should wob­ble as one piece – if it’s still soft                                                    

in the cen­ter bake a lit­tle longer.

Place on a chop­ping board and al­low to cool for 15min and then put in the fridge (on the chop­ping board) and re­frig­er­ate un­til cool.

Serve with dairy-free ice­cream or Ber­ry Sauce (see be­low). Yum!

Quick Ber­ry Sauce

If you re­al­ly want to im­press your friends serve the cheese­cake with this quick ber­ry sauce.

Sim­p­ly blend 1 pack­et of mixed ber­ries (you can use the frozen va­ri­e­ty if you like) with some le­mon juice and gol­d­en-syrup to taste. Blend un­til smooth.

To serve, pour a quick zig zag in the mid­dle of each plate and use a skew­er or fork han­dle to draw out wavy lines through the sauce. Place a slice of cheese­cake on top of the sauce. Serve with dairy-free ice­cream.

Sweet Potato and Lentil Pie

This de­li­cious Sweet Po­ta­toe and Len­til Pie recipe was pro­vid­ed by Amy and An­drew in their Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger pro­file.

In­gre­di­ents:

2-3 sheets of Ve­g­an Puff Pas­try (some su­per­mar­ket va­ri­eties are ve­g­an – just check the in­gre­di­ents)
1 can of len­tils
1 large sweet po­ta­to
1-2 ta­ble­spoons nut­telex or other ve­g­an mar­garine
Soy milk for mash­ing sweet po­ta­toes
Salt and pep­per to taste
1 cup of frozen peas and corn
½ cup of rice
1 serve of ve­g­an gravy such as those made by Mas­sel’s, Or­gran or Mari­gold.

SERVES: 4  PRE­PA­RA­TION TIME: 30min

Pre­pa­ra­tion

Pre­heat oven to 200c and take out 2-3 sheets of pas­try and al­low them to de­frost.

Cut sweet po­ta­to in­to small chunks, boil and mash with nut­telex, soymilk, salt and pep­per. While sweet po­ta­to is boil­ing, cook the rice. Drain and set aside.

Drain and rinse the len­tils and add to the rice. Add the peas and corn to the rice and len­tils mix.

Make up one serve of ve­g­an gravy (about 3/4 cup), add to len­tils, mix and com­bine.

Line pie tin with pas­try, leav­ing enough for the lid. Add                                                    

len­til mix to the pie tin then take the sweet po­ta­to mash and cov­er the top of the len­til mix. Cov­er the pie with re­main­ing pas­try or al­ter­na­tive­ly leave open at the top.

Place in oven and cook for 30-40 mins

* Pic­tured is a sin­gle serve open top vari­a­tion