Allergen-free adventures

Just the other day I was asked if I make allergen-free cupcakes. This poor little sweetheart I was told about, can't eat anything it sounds like! Of course I've made vegan cupcakes here and there but never had I even thought to make something without dairy & soy (or almonds for that matter, I love almonds!). Every kid needs to know what a good cupcake tastes like! So I said I'd give it a shot.

I was a little nervous at first, over sterilizing everything! I guess it can't hurt though :) I used palm oil in place of margarine (in the batter & the frosting), it worked surprisingly well, but the texture of the palm oil alone is a little dry (compared to shortening or margarine). Almost all of my frostings contain some cream cheese because it cuts back on the sweetness of frosting, however even vegan frosting has soy in it, so the frosting was a little sweeter than I wanted but still good. I made it with palm oil, vanilla & lemon extracts, raspberry jam and of course powdered sugar.

The cupcakes I chose to make were a lemon vanilla cake with a raspberry jam filling. I baked in the jam (I think it tastes better that way), added lots of lemon zest and more flour than I would've to make up for using rice milk [which is thinner than soy milk/regular milk]. When beating the palm oil with the sugar, it didn't blend like butter and sugar, so I added a tiny bit of canola oil to smooth it out a bit and make it nice and fluffy. Like the texture you want when using butter and sugar. I used apple cider vinegar like I usually do when making vegan vanilla cupcakes, but after the fact, I should've used lemon juice (since they were lemon vanilla!). The texture was great, the filling was great, the frosting was sweet but a great consistency and easy to pipe (if you make raspberry frosting, use a wide tip so the seeds don't get stuck!).