Lemon and Orange Vegan Cupcakes

Sunny citrus cupcakes always brighten my day in winter. Mid July is windy, rainy and miserable in the Blue Mountains in general - so if you're living somewhere equally cold then I recommend light and fluffy citrus cupcakes to warm you from the inside! As this post goes live I'll be exploring castles in Denmark, and since it's summer over there it shouldn't be cold, rainy or miserable! But I'm thinking of you all back home in the cold (suckers!) so have some sunny cupcakes :)

Ingredients:

The Cupcakes:

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil

1/2 cups of oat milk (or other non dairy milk)

1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

The zest from 1/2 an orange and 1/2 a lemon (TIP: do this before you juice it!)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp orange extract

1 1/3 cup of plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

The Icing:

1/2 cup nuttelex (or other vegan margarine)

2 2/3 cups soft icing mixture

2 tsp lemon juice

The rest of the zest from the other half of the orange and the lemon

To Make:

1. Preheat the oven to a moderate (about 180 degrees C) temperature.

2. Combine sugar, oil, oat milk, orange and lemon juice, zest, vanilla and orange extract in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.

3. Sift in the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly with a whisk again to combine.

4. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way bake for 22 minutes, at which point a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean. Remove from the oven and cool completely before icing.
5. 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).

6. Once the cupcakes are cool, pipe the icing on in a spiral generously on the top of the cakes and decorate with sugar flowers if you like.

Makes 12 cupcakes, and enough icing to ice generously.