Eggless Mocha Cupcakes and Easter baking

I'm planning to do a blog soon about my favourite sweet treat spots in Dublin so keep an eye out for that! In the meantime I wanted to share this recipe for Eggless Mocha Cupcakes with you, it's really delicious, moist and coffeeish.   It's from the Brown Eyed Baker, a great site with loads of other good recipes.  I have adapted to make it eggless as it originally isn't but it works really well.



I had tried another, specifically egg free, mocha cupcake recipe recently and it wasn't great, the cupcakes were a little bit dry and I had made a couple of adjustments to the recipe which didn't work very well so a bit of a fail altogether. However, I may give it a go again but this one sounded lovely although it's not originally egg free. I followed the recipe more or less verbatim except that I substituted a mashed banana for the egg. This worked very well, the banana gives the starchiness and binding that you would get from the egg, without adversely impacting the flavour.

I mashed it very well and just added in place of the egg.


The cupcakes rose well but sank very slightly when they came out of the oven, this doesn't make any difference to taste if it does happen so don't worry about it.



Finally, decorating which is always the fun part :) This icing is really good, coffee flavour and very sweet, these are an occasional treat only I think as they are pretty sugary!  The cupcakes themselves are fab, a lovely soft fluffy texture and moist too.






Here are the ingredients:

½ cup brewed coffee, at room temperature
1½ teaspoons espresso powder (I just used good quality instant coffee)
½ cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1⅓ cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature (113g or 4oz)
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 mashed banana
For the Espresso Buttercream Frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature (226g approx.)
2½ cups powdered sugar
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons espresso powder

Basically just cream the butter and sugar. Mix all the dry ingredients and separately mix the coffee/vanilla and milk. Add the flour mix to the creamed butter/sugar and add liquid in stages until it forms a soft batter. (see recipe link for full details.) Fill the muffin cups two thirds full and bake for about 20 min.  This can easily be made dairy free by substituting dairy free margarine and soy/almond/rice milk.

We also made some hot cross buns yesterday and this recipe is courtesy of Tales from the Kitchen Shed. I love Sarah's baking recipes and made her Brioche Chinois recently which was gorgeous and pretty easy to make.
These are a healthy sugar free recipe, egg free too and they are delicious, so nice fresh out of the oven with butter!
They are a wee bit fiddly and you need time to allow for rising, etc. but we had all day yesterday to potter around so it was the ideal time to make them. Do check out Sarah's blog for some more lovely recipes and here is the link to the Hot Cross Buns - Hot Cross Bun Recipe.




And whilst we are on the Easter theme, we put up our decorated eggs yesterday, I love doing this because each family member has decorated eggs over the years and there are so many memories here!
We hang a large branch on the ceiling and suspend the eggs from it, the effect is so pretty I think :)




Happy Easter to you all, xx

If you'd like to check out some more egg free recipes, here's the link to my Flapjacks and Shortbread post - Egg Free and Nut Free Flapjacks and Shortbread.