Vegan Chocolate Cupcake with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

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I made these cupcakes the other day when I was working on a review for re-usable baking cups and I finally got around to typing up the recipe on here. These are my easy, go to cupcakes, when I need to throw something fun together for a birthday or event. The chocolate cake is rich and moist. The frosting is creamy and indulgent. Best of all? No animal products need to be used to make these!

What You Need:
(for the cake)
1 1/4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup coconut oil or some type of vegetable oil
1 tsp white or apple cider vinegar

(for the frosting)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup vegan butter
1/2 tsp of vanilla
1 Tbsp soy, almond, or other milk

Makes 12 cupcakes

What You Do:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix dry ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

Add the hot water (I like to nuke it to make it hot - it brings out the chocolate flavor of the cocoa), vanilla, oil, and vinegar

Pour into your cupcake cups in a muffin tin, or if you have re-usable baking cups, they can just stand on a cookie sheet, and bake for 15 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean.

Transfer to a cooling rack.

What you do for the frosting:
Put 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla in food processer and mix until smooth.

Once cool, put your frosting into a baggie with a corner cut off, or a piping bag to do your frosting. Or I suppose you could just glob it on there. It is just going to get eaten, right?!

15 minutes later, voila! Perfectly cooked through chocolate cupcakes. I loved how the molds provided a little rigidity to each cupcake as I used a fork to pull each one out to cool.