Vegan Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes with (non-Vegan) Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

I looooove mexican chocolate flavored things. Maybe I just like cinnamon.....and that cayenne kick at the end mmm, so when I found a vegan mexican chocolate cupcake recipe I jumped all over it. I'm not vegan meself if you couldn't tell, but I love being able to feed stuff to my buddies. I just ate one and yuuuum. The great thing about this recipe is how easy it is. Dry ingredients in one bowl, add all the wets and mix lightly then bake. There are going to be more of these in my future. The cupcake recipe is from Strawberry Pepper a vegan blog. The only adjustment I made to it was halving the recipe because I only own 1 muffin tin.

The frosting recipe came from Myrecipes and I also halved this recipe. It's not in the title but this is actually a browned butter cream cheese frosting and after using browned butter in the Mille crepe I thought it would taste really good and it does. As per usual, pulled the recipes from elsewhere and my notes will be in bold.

Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes
24 cupcakes

3 cups all-purpose white flour (or 1/2 whole wheat pastry, 1/2 white)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp cayenne pepper (or less if you’re very sensitive to spice)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups water
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp apple cider or white vinegar

Directions:
preheat oven to 350 ºF and place liners into a muffin pan
1. In a large bowl mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon and cayenne pepper together. I added a little bit less than the recommended cayenne and I think that's a good amount for me personally. Instead of 1 tsp it was more like 3/4 tsp, again halved recipe.
2. Add the vegetable oil, water, vanilla, and vinegar to the dry ingredients and stir. Do not over mix; a few clumps are okay. I happened to use apple cider vinegar.
3. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 of the way, bake for 15-20 minutes or until a knife pulls out clean. Seriously, was that not easy or what?

Browned Butter-Cinnamon-Cream Cheese Frosting 

Southern Living DECEMBER 2011

• Yield: Makes 5 cups
• Hands-on:15 Minutes
• Total:1 Hour, 15 Minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 (8-oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
• 2 (16-oz.) packages powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Cook butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, 6 to 8 minutes or until butter begins to turn golden brown. Immediately remove from heat. Pour butter into a bowl. Cover and chill 1 hour or until butter is cool and begins to solidify. Be careful because as it browns the butter starts foaming up so it becomes difficult to see the liquid portion of the butter for color. I had left the butter overnight so when I took it out today it was too hard for my mixer to process. Try doing the hour thing or take the butter out ahead of time to give it time to soften a little.

2. Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; gradually add powdered sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in cinnamon and vanilla. I only used about 9.5 oz powdered sugar by weight because I had 2 packages that were open and that's what they added up to. Upon tasting I thought that it was a good sweetness so I didn't open another package.