Egg Free Baking: Orange Cupcakes

I wish I had a group of people to consult about egg free recipes. I always put so much trust in published recipes and get disappointed when they fail me. This recipe was half failure and half success. The original recipe calls for putting the batter in a 12 cup bundt pan. I was wanting to serve a small dessert to four people, so I followed all the directions except I put the batter in 4 mini bundt pans plus (luckily) five mini muffin pans. Based on my experience with "normal" recipes, this shouldn't have made a difference.

The mini bundt cakes never set. I cooked them for the suggested time and longer and longer until I gave up. The tops browned nicely, but the insides were a gooey mess. Thankfully, the five mini muffins came out beautifully, so I had the needed dessert.

The icing was my addition since the original recipe calls for putting an orange glaze over the cake, but I wanted them to be more festive with icing.

Mouthwatering Orange Cake modified from "Bakin' Without Eggs"

INGREDIENTS
1/2 C butter or margarine, room temperature
1 C sugar
1/2 C no-fat sour cream or yogurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 C unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 TBSP grated orange peel
1/4 C orange juice concentrate, thawed
1/4 C vegetable oil

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly butter mini muffin pans and dust with flour. Tap out excess flour.
2. In a large bowl, combine butter or margarine and sugar. Cream with a hand held mixer on medium speed for 3 minutes, until fluffy.
3. With mixer at same speed, beat sour cream or yogurt, vanilla, flour, baking powder, baking soda, orange peel, orange juice concentrate, and oil. Mix for another 3 minutes, until smooth.
4. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean and tops are golden. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes.

Yield: about 20 servings

Icing Recipe

Combine 4 oz. cream cheese (softened), 2 TBSP butter, 1 tsp orange juice, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 2 C powdered sugar in a bowl. Mix all ingredients together with a hand mixer until smooth, adding a little bit of extra orange juice until reaching the desired consistency.