Vegan Oreo chocolate cupcakes

Without fully realising my luck, I managed to procure upwards of sixty Oreos last month. Now while European-manufactured Oreos have milk in them, those made in the US don't, rendering them vegan. 24 of them mysteriously never made it into the baking process, but a fair few did. I've adapted this recipe to make it a little more simple from one over at the PETA website.

Something I've noticed from baking with cake wrappers is because of the lack of butter, the cupcake often sticks to the wrapper after baking, so it doesn't come apart as a whole. To stop this from happening so much, only take the wrapper off when the cake is totally cool. I've also read that you could do away with using them altogether and just grease a muffin tin on its own, but I haven't experimented with that yet!

Milk and I have something in common...

Makes around 36 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cupcakes

4 1/2 cups plain flour
3 cups caster sugar
1 cup cocoa
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp bicarbonate soda
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1/8 cup vanilla extract
3 cups fresh brewed coffee
1/4 cup and 2tbsp vinegar

For the faux-butter icing (the measurements really depend on how much icing you want- I often start with a small amount mixed to the right consistency and carry on adding until there is enough)
Icing sugar
Pure soy margarine
1 tsp cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to around 150 degress celsius and fill the cupcake tins with wrappers.

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl with the sugar, cocoa, bicarb and salt. Then add the vegetable oil and vanilla extract until just combined.

Slowly pour in the coffee, mixing for a few minutes until well combined. Finally, add the vinegar and stir for one last minute.

Pour the mixture into the baking cases to just below the edge of the wrappers and bake for around 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle of a cupcake.

Allow to cool completely.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a large bowl, and add small chunks of the soy margarine. Mix in with a fork to separate the margarine until it blends in with the sugar. Add more and more icing sugar until it is as firm as you'd like it to be- the icing will get softer once it's been mixed for a while, but will harden in the fridge. Decorate with a whole or half piece of Oreo- the biscuit will soften next to the icing so it's best to save this final touch to the very last minute.