My Sweet Holiday Cupcake

A few weeks ago, the publisher of My Sweet Vegan contacted me about reviewing Hannah Kaminsky's much sought-after vegan dessert cookbook. Of course I said hell yes! I've been drooling over Hannah's luscious-looking desserts on other people's blogs for way too long.

But drool no more (well, actually I guess I'm drooling even more now that the book is in my possession). It's filled with mouth-watering full-color photos of cakes, pies, tarts, scones, and cookies. She even has a recipe for Matzoh Toffee, which the lovely Stephanie of Poopie Bitch made me for Xmas last year. So, so delicious. It made me sad that I didn't grow up in a Jewish household, eating that stuff all my life!

For my first My Sweet Vegan creation, I decided on the Not Nog Cupcakes — a perfect holiday cake and a wonderful excuse to splurge on a carton of Silk Nog:

I also got a chance to use the vintage holly berry cupcake toppers I ordered from Estelle's Sweet Baking Supply on Etsy.com.

As for the cakes, they are absolutely delicious! Unfortunately, I overfilled about half of the cupcake liners, so several spilled over. And that caused the tops to rip off a couple. But that was no fault of the recipe ... just my silly baking blunder. The cake batter was thicker than what I'm used to and I didn't realize I was over-filling. Oops!

The glaze — a mixture of brown sugar, corn syrup, and dark rum – added a delicious hearty sweetness. I subbed a mixture of evaporated cane juice and water for the corn syrup, a substitution recommendation I found here on the Taste of Home website. I'm not a big fan of conventional corn syrup and that's all that is available in the stores near my house. I didn't have time to make the 20-minute drive to Whole Foods for an organic syrup. But the substitution seemed to work just fine.

There are loads more recipes I'd like to make from My Sweet Vegan, so stay tuned. And I just received another bundle of vegan cookbooks — all dessert cookbooks — from the Farm's Book Publishing Company to review. Plus, I'm still fleshing out the dessert section for my cookbook. Needless to say, you'll likely see more sweet treats on my blog this December!