Eggs can die.

Seriously. I've never liked eggs for breakfast, or at any time of the day really...and I will only touch deviled eggs maybe once or twice a year. Despite my disdain for them, I try to keep a small case of fresh eggs in the apartment just for baking.

Right now, I'm not sure that I'll ever bake with them again.

To make my Earth Day cupcakes, I wanted to go as earth day-friendly as I could with my recipe. A vegan chocolate cake recipe on Eco Child's Play caught my eye, though I was skeptical. Vinegar in a cake? The reviews seemed to be good enough, so I decided to give it a try, adjusting the recipe a bit:

In a mixing bowl, combine:
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour 1 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup sifted unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon espresso powder
Shake the bowl to level the ingredients. Using the back of a spoon, make three holes in the dry ingredients. Pour in one hole:
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Pour in another hole:
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
Pour in the last hole:
2 teaspoons vanilla
Pour over the entire bowl:
1 cup organic soy milk

Mix with a whisk until the lumps are gone. Spoon the mixture into muffin cups (fill each about half to two-thirds full) and bake at 350 degrees. The original recipe says 30 minutes, but my cupcakes were done after about 15 (use your own discretion; I've learned not to trust my ancient dorm oven, but usually bake by smell). Remove from pan and allow to cool.

The batter was very much like a rich brownie batter, with just a slight hint of vinegar to it. My roommate and I were eating it by spoonfuls, which was even more fun knowing there were no raw eggs!

I was able to fill 12 cupcakes, plus a dozen heart-shaped petites-fours and one large PNC cupcake. Since the cake-rising in the recipe depends on a chemical reaction between the vinegar and baking soda and I wasn't sure what kind of time I had before the reaction would die out in the bowl, I filled my cupcakes and scrambled around to find more things to bake the batter in. The cakes actually rise quite a bit into the most perfect domes I've ever seen on a chocolate cupcake; you could probably get 18-24 cupcakes from this recipe.
Just a few minutes after they were out of the oven, I popped a tiny cupcake heart into my mouth...and instantly fell in love. The cake is tender, moist, and has the perfect density. This is the *perfect* chocolate cake, and I'm never using another chocolate cake recipe again.

Now, onto the rest of this cupcake:

I decided to go ahead and use what was left of the bananas-in-orange-caramel to fill the cupcakes. The texture was actually quite a bit smoother after spending the night in the fridge, and what orange flavor I got from the "orange" I found at the Chow Hall was a bit more pronounced. I cut cones out of the tops of my cupcakes, filled the holes with the banana mixture (after mashing it a bit with a spoon), replaced the tops, and poured a "vegan" chocolate glaze over the tops. ("vegan," meaning "not-quite as vegan as the cupcakes," since I used bittersweet chocolate chips, which are usually made with milk products. I'm not sure about the ones I used since they were in a clear bag from home.) For the glaze, I simmered about a third of a cup of organic soy milk in a pan, took it off the heat, then added half a cup of the mystery chocolate chips and about two tablespoons of regular pancake syrup, since we don't keep corn syrup in the apartment. I kept stirring it until it was cooled, then spooned it over the cupcakes and petites-fours, and poured what was left in a bowl. It took forever to set, but after two days the glaze in the bowl has the consistency of a thick-but-creamy chocolate fudge icing, which everyone in the apartment is spreading on the cupcakes, pieces of fruit, spoons...this stuff is great.

chocolate+bananas=yummy!
chocolate+orange=so good!
bananas+orange=mmm!

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with banana and orange filling and chocolate glaze...AMAZING!

Two days later, the cupcakes are still moist and delicious, and the glaze that pooled around the creases in the cupcake paper has a wonderful fudgy-ganache consistency. My random throwing-together in a pan payed off! And to do my part for Earth Day, I didn't drive anywhere to get special ingredients for my cupcakes, but used what I had here or could get by walking.

I had to adjust the brightness on these photos...forgive my poor camera phone's inability to capture just how glossy that finish was.

...and on a side note: I ended up pulling an all-nighter studying for an English final and wasn't able to share these with the Invisible Children group. While this made me SO sad at the time I realized I couldn't make it, the great thing is that the group had a great turnout. Over 80 people showed up! They may not have gotten to enjoy these cupcakes (though I think showing up to a crowd like that with a mere dozen cupcakes would have been fatal) but my roommates and I have relished in having our healthier-than-normal cupcake study snacks.