Monday Bakes: Accidentally Low Fat Red Velvet Cupcakes

For my first Monday Bakes for MoFo, I decided to keep it simple by making Red Velvet Cupcakes from the Ms Cupcake book, The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town. It's basically a chocolate cake with red food colouring but there has always been something I like about red velvet cakes and I've been wanting to try this recipe for a while.

I was trying my best to be organised by gathering and measuring the ingredients before making it, however I soon discovered that I'd wrongly assumed I had two ingredients- bicarbonate of soda and vanilla extract. Both are common ingredients I usually have in, but I'd forgot to replace them when they had run out. It wasn't a big issue, as I was using self raising flour and just doubled the amount of baking powder the recipe asks for.  As for the vanilla I just skipped it.

So, I made the cakes, popped them in the oven and was washing up when I thought:

"Did I add the oil??"

And the answer to that question, was no. I'd measured it out but had accidentally hidden it behind my cook book stand.

Normally in this situation I would have either cried or threw a wobbler. When I watched last week's bake off when Iain throws his baked alaska in the bin and storms out, I totally understood.  That is what I would have done. But something amazing happened, I felt a sense of inner calm wash over me and I decided to see how they turned out.

They weren't a complete disaster, a little dry but they held together. They did sink in the middle, but that's a problem I have with all chocolate cakes except this chocolate orange cupcake recipe.

In the Ms Cupcake book it suggests topping them with a cream cheese butter cream, however I didn't want to waste money on a tub of cream cheese for one recipe.  The original plan was to make a basic vanilla butter cream but obviously, without vanilla extract that was out of the question so I made a chocolate fudge icing using this recipe.

I added quite a bit of the icing to hide the fact they had sunk in the middle!

I actually made these on Sunday night and The Boy is working nights so I let him take them to work to share with his colleagues.  When I came this afternoon, he told me they had gone down well and that two of his colleagues had said how lovely and moist they were- so much for me thinking they were dry!

I'll be in Barcelona for next Monday, so I now have plenty of time to make sure I have ALL the ingredients for the next bake. And I'll remember to add the oil too!