My mom suggested mayo cake, and me being the sweet-tooth monster that I am had already been thinking about that from the moment this large sum of mayo came into my possession. But I wanted to make Mardi Gras cupcakes and make them colored...and mayo cake is chocolate. So they had to be vanilla.
So why is vanilla mayo cake not a thing? (Seriously, google it! They're all chocolate!) Sometimes there just don't seem to be good reasons for things. Why was there no peanut butter tunnel cake either? I just don't know. So I found one internet recipe for vanilla mayo cake and tweaked it a bit...AND IT'S FANTASTIC! These cupcakes rise really high, are very springy, and of course, in the tradition of mayo cake...supermoist!
And since I have all that mayo, I thought I might as well try frosting too...why is there no mayo frosting?? Would it be nasty? Well, I thought I'd find out..and whadda ya know.. IT'S GREAT TOO! It's like cream cheese frosting, but I actually think it's a little better. It even pipes and holds it's shape. No Tofutti or Earth Balance? Try some Vegenaise next time.
Mardi Gras Mayo Cupcakes
makes 12 full size cupcakes (plus 2 slightly-less-than-full-size)
1 cup grapeseed Vegenaise
1 cup cold almond milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp lemon extract
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 T cornstarch
food colors (optional)
Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake tin with paper liners. Beat together mayo and almond milk until smooth. Beat in extracts. Beat in sugar. Beat in dry ingredients. If desired, separate batter into 3 bowls and dye green, purple and gold. Spoon colored batter into liners gently. There's nothing fancy you have to do to get the look in the picture. Spoon in some purple. Gently spoon in gold, then green. Or do them willy-nilly. Bake for 16-19 minutes.
Mayo Frosting
This makes enough to pipe about 1 1/2-2 tablespoons on each cupcake. Double if you want to completely cover each cupcake with a mountain of frosting.
1/2 cup grapeseed Vegenaise
1 tsp vanilla extract
2-4 cups powdered sugar
food colors (optional)
Beat vanilla into mayo. Beat in powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached. (Less sugar if you don't need it to hold it's shape or be piped) Add colors if desired.
Pipe frosting onto cooled cupcakes and top with colored sugar. (Rub some food color into a bowl of sugar with your fingers for DIY colored sugar.)
Some notes: The lemon and almond extracts compliment the tang of the mayo, but you'd probably be ok leaving them out if you don't have them. I'm not sure how other mayos will work in this recipe. I've never had blue cap (original) Vegenaise, but the consensus seems to be that purple cap (grapeseed) Vegenaise tastes much better. In the cupcakes, it might not matter, but it could possibly make a difference in the frosting if your mayo does not taste great on it's own. (Uh, so don't use that jar of nasty-brand vegan mayo that a well-meaning family member accidentally bought you 3 years ago.)
These pictures were taken a day after the cupcakes were made and had been stored unrefrigerated (there's no room in my fridge!) in a plastic container. The color of the frosting changed just slightly (This actually happened within an hour of them being made) and the enclosed moisture made the cupcakes glossy.
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| accidentally smooshed the forsting on this one in the storage container |
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| The unfrosted ones here are not as big as the others, because they were the last bits of batter I was trying to stretch. And they're all Jackson Pollock because of that. |
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| Happy Mardi Gras! |
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| Mardi Gras-colored bird, juvenile Honeycreeper |
