Food-free chocolate cupcakes

‘Food free’ is a label we invented for a very restricted diet one of our relatives was forced to endure for a few months: no gluten, no egg, no dairy, no legumes, no nuts, no spices. It’s pretty limiting, especially if there’s a demand for, oh, a birthday cake for a child. We still have food nicknamed the ‘food-free something-or-other’ from those days.

These are our food-free cupcakes. We had to find them for something special last week, and they got such a good reception we’ll definitely keep making them. They’re soft and crumbly, and they take only minutes to mix, and a few more minutes to bake. I hope the Fiesta Friday crowd loves them just as much

We use brown rice flour, which means they really are very soft, so you’ll need the cupcake paper for them. There’s no way you’d be able to make it as a single cake. Well, you could, but the slices wouldn’t last the distance from whole cake to server to plate to fork to mouth without losing a few crumbs on the way. That said, our latest event had lots of little kids, and they really, really, really love them. If that’s not a vote of confidence for something we call ‘food free’, I don’t know what is.

A food-free mini cupcake – no wheat, no dairy, no egg

• Servings: 12 mini cupcakes
• Time: 30 minutes plus time to cool
• Difficulty: moderate
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Ingredients

• 110 ml of milk (soy milk, oat milk or dairy milk) (just under ½ cup)
• 30 ml vegetable oil (2 non-Aussie tablespoons)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 50 g caster sugar
• 1 cup of brown rice flour (100 g)
• 2 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
• ½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• icing: ½ cup of icing sugar, 1 tablespoon of cocoa, up to 1 tablespoon of hot water

Before you start

1. Read the directions before you do anything. You really do need to.
2. Turn on the oven to 160 degrees C (325 F). It’s one of those times pre-heating matters.
3. Take out a mini-cupcake tray and put in 12 mini-cupcake cases.

Directions

1. Mix together the milk, oil and lemon juice together.
2. In another, larger bowl, mix the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb soda.
3. Very quickly, pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix them together briefly, then quickly pour the mixture into the cupcake cases.
4. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes.
5. Once they’re cooked, take the out of the oven and let them cool while you make the icing.
6. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa together, then slowly add just enough water to form a slightly runny icing. Ice the cakes, and decorate with hundreds and thousands (sprinkles), grated dark chocolate, or whatever else you have on hand.

Notes

The timing is critical. This isn’t one of those cakes you can throw together and go and answer the phone halfway through. Once the liquid and dry ingredients meet, you have to move quickly to get those little, soft, light and airy delicate wonders.

You don’t have to use brown rice flour. You can use the same weight of gluten-free flour if you want.

Source: This gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free chocolate fairy cakes recipe was the inspiration.

A food-free mini cupcake – no wheat, no dairy, no egg