Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

Our weather was so beautiful this weekend... sunny and warm west coast livin'... ahhh! Tough to stay inside and bake... IF I wasn't making chocolate cupcakes!!

These Valentine's cupcakes are made from my Triple Layer Chocolate Cream Cake recipe in The Everyday Vegan. I usually make the whole cake (pictured below right), however I do give notes in the sidebar of the recipe for adapting the recipe to make cupcakes.

This cake is a true crowd pleaser, and not just the vegans or vegetarians (and really, how many of these do you know in a crowd?!) This weekend at a birthday party, one of the moms asked me "when are you going to make that cake again?... I don't even like cake, but I love that one!", and at a recent yoga class one of the gals said "can you bring that chocolate mousse cake sometime?"

What people love about this cake is that it is very moist with a deep cocoa flavor, and it's nestled between layers of a creamy chocolate frosting that's not that gritty sugary sweet icing they are used to. If they ask what's in the icing, they usually stop stunned for a minute when I reply "it's mostly chocolate blended with tofu", but they shake off that 'dirty' word and dig in again! Sometimes I say "yeah... imagine, icing that's also good protein!!" :)