Salted Caramel Vanilla Cupcakes

So here's what I was up to today!  Could not resist trying out the recipe that I found on the Toronto Vegetarian Association website last night whilst browsing.  I have had the pleasure to meet the fabulous Sherry Vanstone and have been lucky enough to partake of her delicious vanilla cupcakes recently (Maya's wedding May 2011) and so was quite sure these would be delectable.  And thousands agree as she entered this recipe last year and she won first place for Best Vegan Cupcake and Best in Show. Recipe can be found under the TVA website and is called The Totally Fabulous Vegan Bake-Off Booklet of Recipes.  These cupcakes are out of this world delicious.  Tasted even better the next day if that's possible (it was)!  The caramel sauce had integrated deeply into the cupcake and all I can say is "get off the computer and go and make these"!  I can see why Sherry won first place with this outstanding combo of flavors.

Veggie Prairie Girl Ramblings
My first batch of cupcakes I made exactly as per the recipe.  For the second batch I had to use 1/2 cup coconut milk and 1/2 cup soy milk because I didn't have a full cup of soy milk left in the house.  I had made a batch previous with only soy milk and for some reason the batch with coconut milk rose nicer.  Could be because coconut milk was room temp and soy milk was cold?  Or because of the coconut milk? This brand contained coconut milk, water and citric acid for ingredients.  Perhaps citric acid helped them rise a little more?  I'll have to do another comparison making two batches before I come to a conclusion on the "rising" issue. Perhaps my vinegar might have been flawed in the first batch and perhaps that was responsible for them being a little lower - there's always variables whenever things don't turn out exactly as anticipated.  I was using organic vinegar and it seemed there was a lot of sediment on the bottom -- perhaps I should have shook it before measuring out the required amount. However regardless of my "rising issues" the taste was perfection. 

Notice the indentations in top of cupcakes -- I wasn't sure how to pool the caramel nicely so instead I took the end of wooden spoon and just jabbed each cupcake. Maybe I was little over enthusiastic with the depth of the indentation. Because I would drip in the caramel and it would just keep disappearing and disappearing. Fortunatley for me the disappearing act proved to be a good thing  -- it was super delicious next day as the caramel had soaked throughout middle of cupcake.  Next time I'll do the same (because it WAS good!) then seal the top with a dab of icing and then make a little puddle.  I also need to buy some coarse salt to sprinkle on top because all I had was fine sea salt and it didn't do the trick. I baked my cupcakes for 16 minutes at 350.  Made 9 regular sized cupcakes.