Cranberry & Orange Cupcakes

I bake the cupakes for The Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green and each month I try to come up with a new flavour to reflect the new month and the new season. Some months I have felt totally uninspired, but other months the choice of flavours is fairly obvious. This month is one of my all time favourites, a festive mix of Cranberry and Orange and some mixed chopped nuts thrown in for good measure. They actually smell like Christmas! For all my cupcake recipes I almost always use Isa's Golden Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World as a base, adapting it slightly and adding extra ingredients depending on the flavours. If you're a vegan who bakes and you dont have this book, the question is...why not?!

1 cup soya milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/3 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/3 cup chopped mixed nuts (optional)
1/2 cup roughly chopped dried cranberries
Frosting:
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese
1/4 cup soya margarine
2 tsp orange oil
zest if 1 orange
2 cups icing sugar
Dried cranberries and orange zest of 1 orange to decorate

Pre-heat the oven to 180oC and prepare a 12 hole muffin pan with muffin cases. Pour the soya milk into a measuring jug and whisk in the cider vinegar. Leave to stand for a few minutes. Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large bowl and mix. Whisk the oil, sugar and vanilla essence into the soya milk mix. Add to the dry ingredients and mix gently until combined. Fold in the chopped nuts and dried cranberries. Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for approx 20 mins or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool before frosting.

To make the frosting: Mix cream cheese and margarine together. Add the orange oil. Mix in the icing sugar until smooth. Fold in the orange zest. Pipe frosting onto cakes and decorate with additional orange zest and whole dried cranberries.