Vegan Cupcakes Really Are Taking Over the World

Man No. 1: Cupcakes!
Woman No. 1: These look diabolical. Oh!
Peggy: They're vegan.
Man No. 1: What?
Peggy: There's no milk or butter or any animal products in them. No animal was harmed in the making of those cupcakes.

—Year of the Dog

Cupcakes are the in-thing at every vegan potluck I go to these days. One might say that vegan cupcakes are taking over the world. Without a doubt, the 2006 cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes That Rule is responsible for this trend. The book was co-authored by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (who wrote a fantastic guest post about Passover foods last year) and Terry Hope Romero.


I'm not the world's most hard-working chef, but my taste buds and my stomach have greatly benefited from this trend for the last year or two. My girlfriend, Eva, just bought the book recently, so we decided to make cupcakes this past weekend. We took the cupcakes to a vegan potluck on Sunday (not too surprisingly, we weren't the only people who had made cupcakes), and the remaining cupcakes were quickly devoured by my coworkers on Monday morning.


Eva and I made carrot-cake cupcakes and peanut-butter cupcakes, and we mixed and matched a bit with the peanut-buttercream (with some chocolate chips, just because) and vegan cream-cheese frostings. I was a big fan of every variation! The cupcakes' appearance were anarchy at its best—without decorating tips or pastry bags, we used what I called the Punk-Rock Ziploc method ("In a super punk-rock pinch you can stuff frosting into zip-top bags, seal the top, and cut a tiny hole in one of the bottom corners. It's a little messy and unpredictable, but that's anarchy for you")—and the cupcakes were delectable.


Go buy the book, make some vegan cupcakes, and blog about it. As Isa and Terry say, vegan cupcakes are "blogworthy": "A surefire way to get people to look at your blog is by posting pictures of cupcakes. No one wants to hear about your terrible day at the office or what you think of China's space program. They want to see pictures of cupcakes, trust us." I'll trust them—here's a picture of the cupcakes:


Some of you are surely saying, "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World rocks my socks, but I've had it for a couple of years now." Well, you're in luck! Isa and Terry have a new cookbook out, Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, and you can win a free copy by entering PETA's contest here. (In other PETA news, PETA's Veg Cooking Blog just ranked Isa and Terry's The Post Punk Kitchen the number-one vegetarian cooking show.)