TRC: Veggie Burgers + Cabeswater Cupcakes

Hey look I'm back and stuff. 

Let's kind of forget that I said I'd post something every Wednesday and, instead, just shoot for posting something every other week. 

All right, let's cook our way through more YA. 

If you've talked to me at all in the past year, you probably know that I am semi-obsessed with The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. If you've never read it, you totally should, and here's what it's about:

• Prep school boys
• Psychic women
• A magical, sentient forest
• A girl whose true love will die if ever she kisses him
• Cars, dreams, and being known

So, to be honest, the characters of TRC (being teenagers) are not particularly good eaters. Blue mostly just eats ice cream. Noah doesn't eat anything. The women of 300 Fox Way make terrible tea. Gansey uses a chocolate bar to bribe Adam into hanging out with him. They go out for pizza and gelato. 

But, in the middle of The Raven King, they throw a going away party for Ronan's younger brother in The Barns (which is Ronan's weird farm house mansion) where they make hamburgers and eat store-bought cupcakes. So! For today's blog post, we're going to make veggie burgers and vegan cupcakes. 

A few quick cookbook recommendations before we get started:

Thug Kitchen: Party Grub is full of vegan party foods. The language used in it, though, is, um, colorful? Vulgar, okay. It's vulgar. So, keep that in mind. But! If you, like me, have vegan friends that you want to be able to feed at parties and things, this is a great book to reference. 

Stylish Cakes by Charlotte Neuville is filled with cakes decorated beautifully, all inspired by fashion and decor. Lomelino's Cakes by Linda Lomelino is another cake cookbook full of beautiful cakes. This one is more recipes whereas Stylish Cakes is more cake decoration. Both, though, are absolutely beautiful.

Okay! So, let's start with the veggie burgers. This is a recipe I devised because, as a vegeterian, the big bummer that I'm always confronted with is this: veggie burgers always seem to either be a thing or just disappointing. Like, the frozen veggie patties that you heat up tend to be boring or bland. Outside of that, the veggie burgers you ome across are always, like, spicy black bean or mushroom or whatever. I just wanted a standard but tasty veggie burger. Something simple. So...

Okay, so, this whole recipe is, like, "what feels right" but here's, approximately, what I use:

• 1/2 Bag of Veggie Crumbles
• 2-3 tbsps of Plain Bread Crumbs
• 1 Egg
• 1ish tbsps Shredded Cheese
• 2 tsps Seasoning (lately, I've been using a DELICIOUS garlic/onion blend, but in the past, I've used bbq blends or even just smoked sea salt)
• hamburger buns

Start by "browning" the veggie crumbles.

Once your veggie crumbles are cooked, mix them together with the rest of the ingredients. Then, fashion them into patties. This should be enough for two patties.

Then, you know, cook 'em up. If you're making them on the stovetop, like I always do, you don't need any aluminum foil. So, you know, if you want to send the guy you like to wander around your house hunting for some aluminum foil so that, later, you're able to go looking for him so that, then, you guys can makeout in your childhood bedroom or whatever, you'll have to do some outdoor grilling or something. 

Then, you're done, so assemble it however you'd like.

Okay, so, onto the cupcakes!

A big part of The Raven Cycle is a sentient forest where the trees speak Latin. It's called Cabeswater. So, I'm calling these cupcakes (a variation of Black Forest Cupcakes) Cabeswater Cupcakes. 

There are three components to these cupcakes: the base, the filling, and the decorating. The first thing I did was make the filling, so that it would have plenty of time to marinate. 

Here's what you'll need:

• 1/4 - 1/3 cup of sugar
• 1 tsp Madagascar Vanilla Bean Powder (or, you know, regular vanilla extract will work too)
• 2 1/2 cups of whole pitted cherries

Grind up your cherries. It's good, gruesome fun. 

Mix in your sugar and vanilla and then let it just hang out for a bit. So, set it to the side, and move on to the cupcake base. 

Here's what you'll need:

•  1/3 cups of all purpose fou
• 2/3s cups of Dutch Cocoa Powder (and to make it extra good, add in a tablespoon of Black Onyx Cocoa Powder)
• 1 1/2 tsps of baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 cups of sugar
• 2/3s cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 can of pumpkin
• 2 tsps vanilla
• 1/3 cup water

This is the same cupcake base that I used in my Kindred Spirits blogpost. So, I'm not going to do a step by step of the whole thing. Basically, just mix everything up and then bake it at 325*F for approximately 20-23 minutes.

When your cupcakes come out, cut little divets into the cake, and spoon in some of your cherry filling. 

Now, we move on to the frosting.

Here's what you need:

• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 1/2 - 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• walnuts
• dark chocolate bar 

The frosting is just coconut oil, shortening, powdered sugar, vanilla and cocoa powder.

I made a light brown frosting and a dark brown frosting. I had this beautiful idea that I'd use light brown over the surface of the cupcake and then paint the dark brown in lines down the middle to make it look like bark. But, the texture was off, so I didn't even try that.

What I wound up doing was using light brown across the surface of the cupcake. Then, I used crushed walnuts around the edges and I covered the middle with shredded dark chocolate.

They were delicious. 

And, here's a pro-tip: I kept the left overs in the fridge, and they were even better the next day.