Rum Raisin? Must be Tofurky Day!

Happy late Tofurky day everyone! As with most vegetarians and vegans, Thanksgiving is usually not one of my favorite "holidays" nor even a day that I wish existed. However, I am always glad to know that there is a day out there that I am able to excuse myself from work and make a full hearted attempt to see how much food my body is capable of holding.

This year was no exception. With my family, my mom is a vegetarian so at least I do have her on my side, and for the rest of them, I believe that they are getting better at accepting my snide remarks and scornful glances at them when they start to talk about the turkey or after picking up their third piece of bird carcass, yet, they are pretty supportive, and so every year there is more and more veg friendly options at the dinner table.


So in my attempt to over load my body, I had a bountiful array of food to chose from. Sweet potatoes, Quorn, veg egg rolls, lo-mien, fried rice,(my aunt if originally from Taiwan so I definitely had the hook-up there!) cranberry sauce, an astounding Humpty Dumpty cake (thanks to my artistic sister), broccoli salad, every fruit and vegetable that was grown in the good ol' Midwest, and of course, my contribution: Vegan Rum Raisin Cupcakes.


Recently, every night before bed, I find myself rereading the cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Now you know that the book is going to be good when it is named Cookbook Of The Year by VegNews magazine. There had been a handful of recipes that I thought that I wanted to make for this special occasion and so I had my lovely fiance decide for me. Instantly he chose the rum raisin ones. As tempting as it was to make them Red Rum Raisin Cupcakes, I restrained and made it a little more family fun oriented.



This is truly one of the best cookbooks for a vegan that I have seen. All of the recipes are uber easy and fun to make and each one you can make them a little bit more healthy for you if you are trying to have your ass not grow AS fast.

Since I am the biggest procrastinator when it comes to the holidays, I was one of the several people at the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving trying to get my cornstarch and confectioners sugar, along with some artificial rum flavoring. After squeezing my way through the baking goods aisles (so thankful I didn't eat the cakes before hand) I checked out and went home to start bakin'.

Some sifting here, some mixing there, and creating a special big cupcake for Brandon, the babies were finished and ready for some rum glazing.

The glaze turned out really nicely, it was pretty much like butterscotch on top, and that was underneath the rum butter cream frosting! I didn't have any frosting tips on hand so I had to resort to using a plastic bag in order to do the piping, but considering there were no cupcakes left after 10 minutes of them sitting on the table, I felt that they were a success...or maybe they all just thought that they had real rum in them and it was be a less obvious way of getting crunk. (pictures are to come shortly)