Just like most food bloggers, I usually like to bake something special around my birthday, January 30th. And this year I went all in with one of my favorite desserts, Vegan Cookies and Cream Cupcakes!
Cupcake cheers to my 36th year on this crazy-beautiful planet, and a few birthday party memories!..
Most Memorable Birthday. Can you remember your most memorable birthday? Or birthdays?
For me, I have to say that my most memorable birthday parties were the good old fashion sleepover parties that I had from grade school all the way through junior high school. Maybe even a few smaller ones in high school, basically the entire span of the oh-so-fabulous 90's decade.
To me, those parties were epic. They had everything I could ever want. (Of course this way before iPhones, emojis, snapchat, Twitter and even Facebook.) We had VHS. Mix tapes. Nintendo. Hand-written notes to pass in class. And a few fancy car phones and Zack Morris phones.
For birthday parties I kindly demanded, in my impassioned pre-teen way, all the birthday sleepover essentials. 1) Pizza. Lots of pizza. 2) Scary movies. 3) Lots of snacks, aka junk food. 4) Happy birthday garlands and balloons and streamers from your local Hallmark store, take that Pinterest!
Party prep was easy. I would go with my mom to the video store and pick out two scary movies and one funny one. I remember renting Pet Cemetery, The Shining and one of the Evil Dead movies. One year we tried watching Candyman and turned it off midway through because it was way too scary. You want to rent scary movies that are laughably scary, if possible. So you can laugh while you are dying inside.
My mom would order a vanilla buttercream-frosted, chocolate, raspberry-jelly-filled layer cake from Safeway, our go-to local grocery store. Sorry Whole Foods, you didn't exist back then. I always requested pink or light blue frosting flowers, never yellow or red. We would order the pizzas and my mom or dad would go pick them up as needed. There would be a few veggie snacks, usually baby carrots and some Hidden Valley ranch dip, aka the official veggie snack of the 90's.
I would invite as many friends as could lay their sleeping bags across my living room floor. That floor turned into a patchwork surface of giggling girls, pillows, messy ponytails and shiny sleeping bags. There would be presents, school gossiping, sleepover games like "Light as a Feather, stiff as a Board" and maybe a Ouija board if someone brought one. One group of girls would usually pass out early and move to a different room to get away from the noisier girls who stayed up later.
In the morning we would pour giant bowls of cold cereal, fight over the Lucky Charms marshmallows and Pops, drink orange juice from concentrate, nibble sliced cantaloupe, and then the moms would drop by one by one to reclaim their smily faced girls.
I would be left in a quiet house with a pile of presents, a messy living room and a wide, tired smile on my face.
I feel really lucky to have those happy birthday memories. I know not everyone does. So those parties were my favorite birthdays. I don't really remember many of my birthdays through my college years, I moved around a lot and found it really hard to make a sturdy group of new college friends. So for that reason, those memories of school-age birthdays are extra special to me. These days I usually spend my birthday doing something extra special with my husband. Or a small group of girlfriends. Last year I went out to brunch with my husband and mom (who was in town), drank giant mugs of mint matcha and then later went to Disneyland for the night. This year, I have a few special things planned too.
So this topic begs the question: What were your favorite birthdays? Think about it. Can you come up with an answer? It isn't always easy.
As an adult, birthdays are special to me because they let us reflect, dream and move forward.
So today, as I look forward to my birthday weekend, I bring you cupcakes! Cupcakes make the world a happier place. And I will take all the happy I can find.
These vegan chocolate cupcakes bake up fluffy and delicious. Rich with cocoa flavor.
Sparklers on top..
Cookies and Cream vegan frosting. I used the vegan Newman's Own cookies..
Vegan Cookies and Cream Cupcakes
Ingredients
Chocolate Cupcakes:
- 3 tablespoon vegan butter or coconut oil, melted (I used Earth Balance vegan butter, but oil can work too)
- 2 flax eggs** (½ cup total liquid, ¼ cup each flax egg) 1 flax egg = 3 tablespoon water + 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
- ½ cup vegan sugar
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ tablespoon non-dairy milk
- 1 cup apple sauce (DIY is best because the texture is usually a bit thicker, which helps)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup all purpose, wheat flour
- ⅓ cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
Cookies and Cream Frosting:
- 1 stick vegan butter (½ cup)
- 3 cups vegan powdered sugar
- 1-2 tablespoon non-dairy milk
- 3 vegan chocolate-cream sandwich cookies, crushed
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter or oil, flax eggs, sugar and vanilla. Beat with a hand mixer until smooth.
- Add in the applesauce, vinegar, non-dairy milk, salt. Beat again. Then add in the cocoa powder and flour. Beat until a fluffy and smooth batter forms.
- Fill the cupcake tins and bake at 350 for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cupcake.
- Cool cupcakes for at least an hour before adding frosting.
- Frosting: Using a mixer, whip together the sugar and non-dairy milk. Add non-dairy milk as needed to thin out the frosting a bit. Finish off by hand folding in the crushed cookies.
- When cupcakes are cooled, you can swirl the frosting on top. I used a spoon to add the frosting since having cookies in the frosting makes it chunky and therefore not a good candidate for a pastry bag swirl. Finish with a cookie or half cookie on top of the frosting. Serve! Chill in the fridge until ready to eat.
RockMyVeganSocks says
"take that Pinterest!" Ahahaha yes! Love it. So our parties sound pretty much the same, believe it or not, I even had the same experience with Candyman haha. I shouldn't be surprised as we were born in the same year 😉
We had a pool though and my birthday is in August, so pool parties were cool thing to have. I remember most of my birthdays being pretty awesome, but I think my favourites were from when I was younger and my super best friend in the whole world lived next door and shared my birthday and we had shared birthday parties. It was pretty awesome.
Happy (belated) birthday, my dear. I hope you had an excellent one. These cupcakes look epically awesome. I may just ask someone to make these for me for my birthday in the summer.
Kathy Patalsky says
Thank you!! 💗 Haha Candyman was the worst!! It was so trendy wth the older kids but then it was just scary and gross and not funny at all. At least that is my memory from watching bits of it! Shared bday parties would be pretty fun.
Bianca @ ElephantasticVegan says
Happy Birthday! I couldn't imagine a better way to celebrate than with these vegan cookies & cream cupcakes! They look divine! <3
Kathy Patalsky says
Thank you Bianca
dara says
I hope you have a very happy birthday! You have given so very many vegans happy birthdays with your foolproof, yummy recipes! I sincerely hope someone does something sweet for you! My birthday is tomorrow, and my partner is taking his second stab at baking for me. Fingers crossed! 🙂 Happy Birthday, Kathy!
Shira says
Happy birthday! My most memorable birthday actually has a vegan connection. I had been vegan for just about a year when the home I grew up in was destroyed by an earthquake (Northridge Quake in 1994). I was just going to forget about my 18th birthday (which was a few weeks later), especially because my family was all split up at the time, living with different friends until we could find a place to live. And all my friends surprised me with a birthday party and they all made vegan food. Even though it was the 90s and they really had no clue what to do! They all worked so hard to make a 100% vegan party for me and I was so touched!
Kathy Sturr says
Oh my gosh ... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Kathy Sturr says
Yum! I'm not usually turned on by cupcakes but these look decadent. Awww such sweet birthday memories! My favorite birthdays are right now ... because they usually kick off the migration season where by I migrate to Florida for the winter with a first night's stop at my Mom's where we have a birthday party but also celebrate seeing each other until spring. I just turned 50 and you would think I would have partied hardy but I ended up in bed because I drank too much before dinner (thanks to my brother in law's delicious cosmos with fresh organic cranberry juice), and I was exhausted from getting everything done/packed to make our migration trip. I had to put my large garden to bed (and did a LOT of catch up work), I opened a small gallery in my garage and hosted a grand opening, continuing home improvement, and we (my husband and I) continued working on but then buttoned up our summer lake getaway for winter ... all good, great things but it takes effort. Still, for me, every birthday gets better with age!
John Hartil says
Oh wow so so scrumptious looking!
Jessica Piekenbrock says
Most memorable birthdays would have to be my 8th birthday and my 21st birthday. The 21st for obvious reasons lol. And my 8th because I was in the hospital getting my appendix taken out. It got infected too so I was in the hospital for quite a while and missed the whole last month of 2nd grade! So when I was well enough my parents went all out for my birthday party and everyone in my class came. Very memorable lol.
Jessica Piekenbrock says
And also, happy birthday! 🙂
Kathy Patalsky says
Thank youuuuu 💗
Kathy Patalsky says
Aw wow that is quite a m notable birthday and SO sweet that your classmates did that. It's funny I don't even remember my 21st 😂 I was in the middle of moving and switching schools so it somehow slipped by. I think my most memorable numeric bday so far was when I turned 30. I definitely freaked out. I chopped off my hair with bangs and it looked so bad!!! The photos of my trying to take a good selfie are pretty funny. It was basically the same haircut that I had when I was 4. 🙈
Jessica Piekenbrock says
Haha, yes I am quickly approaching 30 and not looking forward to it!
Taylor says
Ok 1) I need these cupcakes in my life, ASAP, 2) happy birthday!! and 3) I am also lucky to have had many memorable birthdays as a child (and as a college student, actually) but my favorite was my 8th birthday. Now, I wouldn't condone going to see captive animals as entertainment, but at the time I was obsessed with manatees (still am) so my parents took me to Marineland! I remember I got to see a bunch of manatees and other sea creatures, my parents bought me a stuffed manatee toy that I still have (his name is Manny and my cat loves snuggling with him lol), and dangly sea turtle earrings (sadly, these were lost). Maybe to recreate this birthday I could go on a manatee spotting tour...kind of like whale watching, but with manatees 😉
Kathy Patalsky says
Thank you Taylor! Aw I love manatees the are the most magical sweet creatures!
autumndandelion says
Happy Birthday! What a treat!
Kathy Patalsky says
Thank you! 😊
Maggie B says
My favorite birthday was the surprise birthday party my mom threw for me on my 20th. It was a play on the parties I used to have as a kid, with gift bags, and Pin the Kiss on Johnny Depp (like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, except with one of my old Johnny Depp posters! Lol!). It was so great to have just my close girlfriends and family together and it was such a surprise!! Happy Birthday to you! 🙂
Kathy Patalsky says
That is amazing! What a cool mom. Pin the tail on Johnny is also amazing. What a fun memory and genius idea. Maybe for my 40th I will do a sleepover throwback 👌