Cupcake Wars – Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

This weekend we celebrated my niece’s 3rd birthday. My niece Jazaleia (Jazzy for short) is my only niece and the only grandchild.  She is the cutest and most adorable little girl and all her Aunties spoils her with attention.

I love spending time with her. She’s at that age where you can have a whole conversation with her and be amaze that someone who is that young can talk so much. She has a large vocabulary. She leaves me cute voicemails and when I hear her cute voice and her rambling, it brightens up my day.

We had a small get together with family and friends. My sister requested for me to bring dessert to the party. Typical family parties involved a lot of food and also desserts. Most filipino desserts are made with heavy sugar and milk, topped with condensed milk. It’s rich, dense and needless to say, very delicious.

I wanted to bake a healthier and lighter dessert offering to the party. If you watch Food Network’s Cupcake War show, you’ll know that Chef Chloe won the competition with her Vegan Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes. She’s the first Vegan to win on Food Network.

Her cupcakes seemed easy enough to make and I had all the ingredients except for the coconut milk.

I’m a fan of coconut milk but I wasn’t sure if the recipe called for the canned coconut milk or the boxed coconut milk in the refrigerated aisle.

I went straight to the source and asked Chef Chloe herself on twitter:

Chef Chloe responded:

I was very excited to make the cupcakes, not only because it was healthier version of a classic flavor but it also looked very pretty and colorful.

I made  the following substitution from the original recipe. I used maple sugar because it’s healthier and does not leave me with a sugar crash after. I made the substitution for the flour, oil and coffee because it’s what I had in my pantry.

Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes
Ingredients:

1½ cups all-purpose flour whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup sugar   maple sugar 
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup coconut milk
½ cup vegetable oil grapeseed oil
2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. instant espresso powder coffee
1 ½ cups hulled and sliced fresh strawberries

Frosting:
4 cups organic confectioners sugar
1/2 cup refined coconut oil at room temperature
1 Tbs vanilla extract
¼ cup water

Directions:
Make the frosting by combining sugar, oil, and vanilla extract in bowl of mixer; beat on medium-high speed until combined; with mixer running, add 1 Tbs. of water at a time, until reaching desired consistency.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 12-cup cupcake pan with paper liners.
Sift or whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt into bowl; in a separate bowl, mix coconut milk, oil, vinegar, vanilla, and espresso powder until smooth.
Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and mix with fork or whisk.
Divide batter evenly among prepared cupcake liners until each cup is 2/3 full; bake for about 20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Once cupcakes are completely cooled, slice off top 1/3 of each cupcake and slather with frosting and sliced strawberries; place top of cupcake back on top and add a bit of frosting and sliced strawberries; dust with confectioners’ sugar.

For more of Chef Chloe’s delicious cupcake recipes, visit www.ChefChloe.com.

This was moist and very chocolaty without being too sweet.

I love the layers of chocolate, strawberries and icing. It’s makes it very fun to eat.

The birthday girl enjoying her birthday cupcakes.

Btw, I see the making of a future food blogger. She likes taking pictures of her food 🙂

Happy Birthday Jazzy!!!

Thanks Chef Chloe!!!