if I have a vegan chocolate cake, it needs to meet or surpass its non-vegan equivalent in taste, in texture and in appearance.
And, it most certainly cannot have any weird artificial or suspicious gunk holding it together.
Anyway, I stumbled across a basic recipe online: it came out disturbingly black, and tasted acrid. And I tried an online vegan icing recipe: it was revoltingly oily, and tear-inducingly bitter. So, I’ve chopped and changed and adjusted and refined, and this is the result: cupcakes that are juicy, fluffy, tender, and moist, with a smooth, creamy chocolatey icing.
They are so good that I guarantee no one will guess they’re vegan.