Use Your Noggin’

Paging through one of the first Christmas-oriented baking catalogs a month ago, I found one recipe in particular that held my interest. Upon first reading the name and skimming through the list of ingredients, I thought to myself, “Could they have made it any more un-vegan? This is one of those things that I don’t think could ever successfully be veganized.” So I continued looking through the pages of useless cooking contraptions and increasingly repulsive recipes with this thought hanging in the back of my head. Reaching the back cover at last, I returned to this egg nog tea cake recipe (Eggs! Milk! Butter! The only thing that would have made it less vegan-friendly would have been bacon, perhaps!) and took a closer look. Why should this be any different from the other recipes I’ve converted in the past? It became a challenge I simply couldn’t turn down, so I took the bull by the horns and went for it.

My first change was in the final form it would take. I knew immediately that cupcakes would receive a much warmer welcome than some ugly, multiple serving loaf cake. Everyone deserves their own personal cake in the season of indulgence anyways, aside from the popularity of cupcakes in general. Making this conversion from an approximate total of two loaves yielded a copious amount of sweet cuppers; Exactly two dozen were to emerge from my oven from this one batch.

By no means is this recipe diet-friendly… But what good would anything egg nog be if it were ‘light’? I understand that it may appear to contain disturbing amounts of margarine and such, but just remember how many cupcakes this makes! It’s not so bad spread out, unless you find it hard to stop at one…

Not-Nog Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Margarine
2 Cups Sugar
1 1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla
1 Teaspoon Salt
6 Ounces Vanilla Soy Yogurt
1 Tablespoon Ener-G Egg Replacer
3 3/4 Cups AP Flour
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 1/2 Cups Silk Nog or Holly Nog

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees and throw cupcake liners in to medium cupcake pans. Combine the Ener-G powder with a 1/4 cup of water and set aside.

In a stand mixer, cream the margarine with the sugar, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Add your container of soy yogurt and beat thoroughly before introducing the egg replacer / water mixture shortly afterwards. It will probably be fairly lumpy at this point, but just make sure that you don’t have any obscenely large clumps of solid margarine and you should be fine.

Move over to a separate vessel for a moment and combine your flour, baking powder and soda before slowly adding these dry ingredients to the contents of the bowl waiting in your stand mixer. Doing this is batches is a good idea: Alternate pouring in more flour with the Soy Nog of your choice so that it doesn’t dry out. Be sure to fully incorporate each addition, but be careful to not over-mix.

Pour batter into the cupcake liners about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full, slide into the oven and bake for 20 – 22 minutes. The cakes shouldn’t look browned, per-say, so keep a close eye on them and check for doneness using the toothpick method.

Topping

Ingredients:

2/3 Cup Margarine
2/3 Cup Brown Sugar
2/3 Cup Light Corn Syrup
Pinch Salt
2 Tablespoons Rum
1 Cup Sliced Almonds (Roasted, if desired)

In a medium sauce pan over medium/low heat, melt the margarine with the sugar and corn syrup and stir until everything is dissolved and no longer grainy. Bring up to a boil and continue to cook for several more minutes until the temperature reaches somewhere around 200 degrees. Remove pot from the heat and add in the rum and nuts, working quickly so that it doesn’t harden before making it to your cupcakes. Distribute evenly over the tops of each cupcake and allow to cool completely before serving.

Makes 24 Cupcakes

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