canada day cupcakes

Celebrating Canada Day while being far away from Canada makes the celebrations all the more meaningful and worthwhile (even though there are only a few of us celebrating)! While we will be missing out on fireworks and fun at the beach, we will be compensating by having a bbq and eating THESE:

Yum!

These are cherry chip cupcakes with buttercream icing, red sprinkles, and royal icing maple leafs.

To make royal icing cupcake decorations, simply find a shape on the computer and print it out at the size you want. Then place the sheet underneath wax paper and pipe the royal icing overtop. Leave it to dry overnight, otherwise the shapes will crack when you try to peel them off the wax paper. And voila!

Buttercream Icing:

1/2 C. butter

500 g icing sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

3 Tbsp. milk

Beat all ingredients together until well combined. That's it!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

colourful cupcakes

1. Make a batch of cupcakes from scratch (hah...or use a mix like me).

2. Cover with icing.

3. Dip in sprinkles.

4. Eat and pretend you did a lot of work.

chocolate avocado cupcakes

Yup, that's right. Chocolate cupcakes...with avocado. I've been eyeing this recipe for awhile, and since I live in a country where avocados cost 10 cents each rather than $10 each, I decided to give it a go! And the result: healthy and scrumptious chocolate cupcakes that don't taste a bit like avocado! I love being sneaky.

Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes

*recipe from A Vegetarian in the Middle East

3 C. flour

6 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

2 C. sugar

1/4 vegetable oil

1/2 C. mashed avocado

2 C. water

2 Tbsp. white vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla

Combine all the dry ingredients, except sugar.

Mix all wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add sugar.

Mix wet with dry and beat until smooth.

Pour batter into two 9-inch round cake pans (or one cake pan, one muffin tin. I halved the recipe and just made 12 cupcakes).

Bake at 350 until toothpick inserted comes out clean (20 min. for cupcakes, 30-40 min. for cake).

I iced the cupcakes with icing made of cocoa, icing sugar, and brewed coffee, but I didn't measure and I have no idea how much of each I used, so I can't help you out with that one. I think any kind of icing would be good though - chocolate, vanilla, buttercream...or no icing at all.

Enjoy!