Valentine's Day Water Marble

The original intention was to take better photos of this mani before posting it, I don't like the fact that I'm just holding my phone, but it ended up getting pretty chipped with all the baking and crafting I've been doing for Valentine's Day so alas, if you want to see the mani this will have to do. I took these photos while waiting for the cupcakes to cool and haven't had a moment since to do anything a little more suitable.

Ultimately, I'm not normally a fan of Valentine's Day but I can't help but get into the excitement over just about any holiday. For this water marble I used Sally Hansen White On as the base and marbled with the same, along with OPI Charged Up Cherry and OPI Flower-to-Flower.

Oooh look, a little while later with the cupcake!

*gobbles*

Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers out there! ^-^

Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes with Fresh Strawberry Frosting

A friend of mine gave me some Valentine's Day themed cupcake liners recently, so what better incentive is there to make pink frosted goodies to celebrate the upcoming holiday? My sister was coming for dinner over the weekend and, being lactose intolerant, she doesn't often get to indulge in the sweets we like serve. Instead of just making the cupcakes lactose free I decided to make them fully vegan to try something new.

The result? 

Tada! Pretty cute, don't you think? 

I adapted the recipe slightly from here, so I'm posting the ingredients/methods I used.

Ingredients

	1	cup vanilla soy milk
	1	tsp. apple cider vinegar
	1¼	cups all-purpose flour
	2	Tbsp. cornstarch
	¾	tsp. baking powder
	½	tsp. baking soda
	¼	tsp. salt (increase salt to ½ teaspoon if you’re using oil instead of margarine)
	½	cup non-hydrogenated margarine, softened
	¾	cup sugar
	2½	tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside for a few minutes to get good and curdled.
3. Sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix.
4. In a separate large bowl, use a handheld mixer at medium speed to cream the margarine and sugar for about 2 minutes until light and fluffy. (Don’t beat past 2 minutes.) Beat in the vanilla then alternate beating in the soy milk mixture and dry ingredients, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl a few times.
5. Fill cupcake liners two-thirds of the way and bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack, and let cool completely before frosting.

I meant to grab a photo, and I thought I had, but the cupcakes actually collapsed after I took them out of the oven. I'm not sure what the reason was, but it didn't make a huge difference. The overall texture and flavour was incredible, and the scoop in the center just left room for more icing! 

I actually used vanilla that I made at home from scratch. Kinda cool, huh? All you do is take 2 vanilla beans, split them down the middle and soak them in a jar with some vodka for 2 months, shaking weekly. Make sure it's an airtight container and kept somewhere dark.

Anyway, frosting! Check this beauty out:

Delicious!

I'm simply going to link the recipe for this, as I followed it fairly closely. They only thing I didn't do according to recipe is let the reduction cool be before moving on to the cornstarch and salt step. I'm not sure how that would have impacted the recipe but it definitely shaved off some time. 

If you're going to be making this frosting I recommend trying to make the strawberry reduction the night before, it will make things feel like they're moving much faster. The original recipe calls for 1/2lb of strawberries but  I recommend going for 3/4-1lb just to be safe. After reducing it I didn't have quite what was needed, which I'm sure would have been quite lovely. 

Party time!