Vegan Oreo Cheesecake cupcakes

One of the greatest things about birthdays is cake.

And one of the greatest things about cakes is BAKING THEM.

And of the greatest things about baking is baking NEW THINGS.

I love being quite adventurous with my baking, and I am always looking to bake new things, with new things. When I learned about vegan baking my life was pretty much never the same - I tried to make vegan desserts whenever I could, because a) they're healthier as they're plant-based (and no salmonella risk from tasting raw batter/cookie dough) and b) the look of peoples' faces is priceless when I tell them the chocolate pudding they are eating is made from tofu. Also vegan desserts means more sharing, because well, vegans can eat them and for some reason, I know quite a few vegans! And one of them is my best friend Callam.

When Callam's birthday came around I was invited to his surprise birthday party, and volunteered to be in charge of cake. I was actually really undecided on what to make, and was torn between Oreo cheesecake cupcakes (because I *sneakily* found out that Callam likes Oreos) and chocolate cupcakes with peppermint icing (these were pretty fail-proof, I've made them once with pretty good responses from the peeps I was feeding them to). And yes, Oreos are supposedly vegan!

I hadn't been able to find vegan cream cheese in Planet Organic, so I was pretty set on the chocolate cupcakes, until I had a browse at Whole Foods in Soho for some vegan yoghurt. I'd have normally gone with Alpro which you can find at most supermarkets, but the Tesco's near me is quite a small one and I didn't want to risk coming all the way home to find out that I don't have yoghurt for my cake.

BUT, chocolate peppermint cupcakes it was not to be. As I was browsing along the vegan "dairy" products, there it was. Tubs of vegan cream cheese, in all its glory.

How could cream cheese be vegan, you say? Made with coconut oil innit.

I did hang around contemplating if I should stick with my original chocolate peppermint cupcakes plan, or go for the Oreo cheesecakes instead. Actually stuck around Whole Foods for like a good 15 minutes deciding. After what might as well have been an eternity, I thought YOLO and went with the Oreo cheesecake cupcakes, despite having never made them before (so, I heard you like bad girls...), and also because they required fewer ingredients.

Fast forward to that night at approximately 11pm, when I started to get to work with my cupcakes. Yes, 11pm is an odd time to be baking, but I had been at training earlier that evening and had been busy. Also, for some reason, I'm generally a night-baker, which works out fine, because it means my cakes are fresher when I bring them to stuff the next day. Also works great in this case because I chilled in the fridge the cheesecakes just before bed and they were ready the next day for eating.

Anyway, one of the cons of baking at 11pm on a Sunday night is the moment of panic when you realise that you don't quite have enough Oreos - and ALL THE SUPERMARKETS ARE CLOSED. I had completely underestimated how much I needed and I only had a pack at home, which wasn't enough as I had already used up the entire pack for the base itself - I needed some more to put in the cheesecake itself. I suppose I could have omitted that, but then it wouldn't be quite an Oreo cheesecake, would it?

No fear, I thought. The off-licence across the street would still be open. EXCEPT IT WASN'T, I realised in horror as I got there. I got my phone out and decided to look up any nearby supermarkets that were still open, and found out that the Sainsbury's near Waterloo was open till midnight. Yesss! Except I didn't think I'd need to bring my Oyster card out, so I had to go home, get it, and come out again... which is when I noticed the lights from a tiny makeshift convenience store sort of thing next to the tube station.

Will they have Oreos? I think. It was definitely a very small shop. Oh well, worth a shot. I got to the shop and had a quick look at the biscuits section.. rich tea biscuits, hobnobs... OREOS, PRAISE THE LORD. And that folks, is how a tiny convenience store saved my cheesecake and me the trouble of getting the bus to Waterloo and back.

So it was all business as usual, I made the cakes, while my sis helped (i.e. eating the Oreos that she helped chopped up), and in to the oven they went! Now, I've made cheesecakes before, but I don't know if it's just been awhile since I'd made baked ones, or if it was the ingredients, or if it was my mistrust of the oven time the recipe had suggested, but the cakes came out ABSOLUTELY BUTTERS. There were cracks on every single one of them, even though I even did the thing where you create a water bath sort of thing in the oven! Ladies and gents, if a recipe tells you to bake a cake for 20 minutes and leave them in the oven after turning off the heat for 5, DO NOT bake them for 25 and leave them for 10.

I was still contemplating whether I should make icing for the cakes as it was baking, but when it came out, I thought, yeah, I'll defo have to ice them. Fortunately I had my coconut cream chilling in the fridge, ready to be whipped the next day into some chocolate fudge icing.

I did a taste test the next morning and my first thought was how similar it tasted to an actual cheesecake. There was literally NO way of telling they were vegan. The vegan cream cheese that I had used were exactly the same in texture as ordinary cream cheese, so I guess there was no surprise there. The cheesecakes firmed up a lot, but I wonder if they could have been creamier if I had just followed the instructions and not left the cupcakes in the oven for too long *face twitch*. But that is an experiment for next time.

Cool, I thought, now just got to make the icing to cover up the cracks. Icing making was a lot less dramatic, whipped it up and put it in the fridge to chill and thicken. I wanted to ice the cakes just before I took them out so that they wouldn't melt that much before I brought them to the venue.

I had made a chocolate fudge icing from coconut cream using a recipe I found online, and tweaked it a little bit. I added an extra table spoon of cocoa powder because there was still quite a strong coconut flavour even with 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, and I didn't really want the coconut flavour to come through too much. I guess that is a con of making icing with coconut cream - maybe next time I could use tofu or margarine instead.

Now, I had this grand plan of writing "HAPPY BDAY CALLAM" in writing icing on top of the icing itself, but I always try to go a bit extra with my things, and frankly, I think chocolate icing could literally look like shit if I don't make it pretty. I piped the icing using a star-shaped nozzle, and then tried to write on it, but as soon as I was halfway, the blue icing melted and the letters were completely unintelligible. I then decided to create a flat surface with a spoon on a few of them and it looked a little bit better, but at this point I was going to be late and decided to fix it in the venue itself, or that maybe it wouldn't look too bad.

By the time the cakes got to the venue there was NO way of telling what had been written on it, so I was like sod it, asked for a spoon, and covered the letters (in a hurry, in case Callam arrived and caught me in the act). Definitely got the attention from the waiters who got me the spoon.

So lesson #3 for today is, don't try and be extra and use writing icing on icing that is NOT flat.

This is what the icing was meant to look like, before I tried to go extra with the writing icing. You can see a faint bit of blue icing on it if you look closely - it was my test cupcake, in case I got wobbly hands with the writing.

I used whole Oreos for the cheesecake biscuit base, a) because aesthetics b) making the crumbs was effort and messy and I'm lazy and c) I didn't have any suitable liquid to combine the crumbs. I did see several recipes using margarine, coconut oil and even cocoa butter though. Again, that might be an experiment for another time. But it looked like people didn't have a problem with whole Oreos as a base. I certainly didn't.

Regardless of the imperfections, the cupcakes seemed quite popular, especially with the birthday boy (thankfully)!

Happiest of birthdays Callam, may your life be full of Oreo cheesecake and other lovely things.

RECIPE

I adapted Chocolate Covered Katie's (who is, by the way, my go-to vegan recipe guide, definitely check her stuff out) cheesecake cupcakes recipe by.... well, adding Oreos, mainly. Also by overbaking the cupcakes.. but obviously, that's not recommended, for reasons outlined above.

This is probably where I should admit that I am a pretty firm believer in what we call in Malaysia agak-agak, which means estimating, especially in cooking. Don't take my word for it, but in fact, I'm pretty certain it's quite an Asian thing to just.. live life on the edge and cook without recipes. Ask any Malaysian makcik/aunty for a homemade dish recipe, and they'll tell you, "WHERE GOT RECIPE WAN! AGAK-AGAK ONLY LAH!" (True story: my grandmother with my cousin who asked her for a pork dish recipe). I think it's cool because you get a variety in the same dish, and there's always room for experimentations. This probably is a huge baking faux pas, because recipes for baked goods often needs to be quite precise, as too much or too little of something can ruin it entirely. As people say, cooking is an art, but baking is a science.

Not like that's ever stopped my inner Malaysian aunty who still tries to incorporate some "agak-agak" doctrine within baking, which has had good and bad results (e.g. cracked cheesecakes, I am never going to shut up about the cracks). For example, in this recipe, 12 oz of cream cheese meant 1 and 1/3 tubs of 9 oz cream cheese to me. Because ain't nobody got time to convert oz to g and get the scales out when you're baking at 11pm. Also,... why would you do that when you can perfectly estimate 1 and 1/3 tubs?!

VEGAN OREO CHEESECAKE CUPCAKES

• 1 1/2 to 2 packets of Oreos

• 12 oz or 340g vegan cream cheese

• 1 cup plain vegan yogurt

• 1/4 cup sugar OR maple syrup, xylitol, or honey (I went with sugar)

• pinch stevia or 2 additional tbsp sugar (I went with sugar)

• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

• 2 tsp cornflour

1) Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (that's 350 degrees Fahrenheit for you Americans).

2) Line muffin tin with cupcake liners and place an Oreo cookie at the bottom of each liner.

3) Combine cream cheese, yoghurt and vanilla extract.

4) Add sugar and cornflour and mix. I personally would sift in the sugar and cornflour to the cream cheese mixture to remove lumps, but that's optional (if you want to live life on edge).

5) Chop up remaining Oreos (approximately half a packet) and add to cream cheese mixture. Fold in the chopped Oreos.

6) Scoop mixture into muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, leave cupcakes in the oven for an additional 5 minutes with the heat turned off and without opening the oven door. OPTIONAL: Prepare a water bath by filling a baking tin with water and placing it in the oven with the cupcakes as they bake to add moisture and prevent cracking.

7) Remove cheesecakes from the oven and let cool. When cupcakes are cooled, refrigerate cupcakes overnight.

8) Et voila.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE ICING WITH COCONUT CREAM

(adapted from A Baking Girl)

• 1 can full-fat coconut milk (approximately 250 ml), or coconut cream

• 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon cocoa powder

• 1/4 cup icing sugar (adjust to taste)

• a pinch of salt

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1) Refrigerate can of coconut milk for about 8 hours or overnight (skip if using coconut cream).

2) Turn can upside down and open. Drain coconut water from the top (which, according to my research, can be used for things like smoothies) and scoop white coconut cream from the bottom of the can.

3) Beat the cream with an electric mixer until fluffy.

4) In a separate bowl, sift in cocoa powder and icing sugar and combine. Add the cocoa powder and sugar mix to the coconut cream, along with the vanilla extract and salt.

5) Combine at low speed (unless you want to get sugar and cocoa all over you) until ingredients are incorporated and icing is thick and fluffy.

6) Refrigerate icing until ready to use. Icing thickens the longer it is chilled, and I would personally chill the icing for a good 2 hours before using them.

7) Pipe on to cupcakes.