Chocolate & Grapefruit Marmalade Vegan Cupcakes

Today I'm baking. It's a big, big baking day involving loads of cupcakes. Why? Because I'm donating my time and my delicious cupcakes to the wonderful Swopera. Swopera is a great event created by best friend to raise money for promoting equal marriage rights in Australia. It's a really fun night in which singers choose arias from opposite gender roles to perform. You can get all the details on the Swopera facebook page. I'm really excited about it and am thrilled to donate my time to a cause I feel so passionate about.

If you're in Sydney this weekend & not doing anything on Saturday night then come on down to Paddington Uniting Church (Oxford St) for a really fun night. You can also get one of these badass cupcakes to go with your bitchin' cup of tea. You know you want to!

I used my own homemade grapefruit marmalade for this, but you can use store bought (if you can find it anywhere). If you can't get it anywhere I recommend making your own, it's very easy and the grapefruit marmalade gives the cupcakes a delicious depth. The hint of bitterness of the grapefruit rind compliments the chocolate beautifully and makes a really sohpisticated flavour. If you don't want to make the grapefruit marmalade you can try substituting 1/2 cup grapefruit juice instead of half of the oat milk.

These can also be made with other marmalades - try it with orange, lemon & lime, or even ginger marmalade (yum!). I've iced mine with orange buttercream icing, but you can use chocolate icing if you want to make them even more chocolatey.

Chocolate & Grapefruit Marmalade Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup oat milk (or soy milk)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup grapefruit marmalade
1 cup wholemeal plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 cup cocoa powder

To Make
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. In a large bowl whisk together the oat milk, sugar, canola oil, vanilla extract and grapefruit marmalade.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk until all combined.
4. Fill your cupcake baking tray with liners and fill them 3/4 full of batter.
5. Bake for 23 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
6. Allow to cool. To serve, dust with icing sugar or ice with orange buttercream icing (recipe below) or chocolate buttercream icing.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

Orange Buttercream Icing

The Icing:

1/2 cup nuttelex (or other vegan margarine)

2 2/3 cups soft icing mixture

1 tsp vanilla extracty

The zest of 1 orange

1. Mix the nuttelex, lemon juice, zest and icing mixture together in a bowl using either an electric mixer or a knife and some good old elbow grease (nice workout).
2. Once the cupcakes are cool, pipe the icing on in a spiral generously on the top of the cakes and decorate as you like (I used fresh blueberries).

I've entered this dish in the Vegan Virtual Linky Potluck.