I have been out of the kitchen for 2 weeks, give or take a few days.

My dad was on leave and well, that means one thing for me. He is in charge of cooking.

Let’s just say, he was in a bad mood all holiday long, I ate two weeks worth of Mr D takeways and my mother survived on Simba potato chips and buttered bread.

By the end of the leave cycle both my parents were grateful that I was back in the kitchen cooking.

My dad cooked half a cabbage for lunch, no rice, no sides to go with it. Just a half a cabbage that had to last through lunch, supper and maybe a midnight snack. I took one look and ordered online, my mother had no option but to eat it and well my dad ate it but with a heavy head. Not sure why, he made it. He can’t complain for his own cooking.

With cooking came the responsibility of doing the grocery haul, mmmm, what can I say, the man bought salad tomatoes instead of jammy tomatoes and he stuck to a basket, no snacks no extras, lord when I go shopping, the trolley can barely move and the cashier looks behind me, expecting to see a line of children because of all the sweets and snacks. Not my dad, he didn’t even buy a Pie to eat on the way home. Remind me never ever to send him shopping again.

I decided to bake these cupcakes as a welcome back to my kitchen celebration and then I opened the spice cupboard and if I could I would have thrown a tantrum, slammed the doors shut and cried like a 5 year old on the floor. Who knew one could dirty a spice cupboard in 2 weeks??? My father managed to rearrange the entire cupboard, I spent the better part of Saturday, refilling, restocking, and reorganizing everything. I landed up throwing a few items away in the process, spices he left over that went dry in the heat, my nutritional yeast he left open on the sink in the sun and well 14 days of high temperatures, it went brown and started to grow!

He also might have broken my freezer door, but that rant is for another post, the post where I actually tackle that freezer as it looks like another disaster that needs to be tackled. I just don’t have the energy to deal with that at the moment.

I came across these cupcakes precovid and just never attempted to make them, well I don’t always have Avo oil in the pantry and there never seems to be left over avo’s for me to play with. Avo’s in our household never last. Everyboday eats avo with everything, be it eggs, noodles, toast, bagels and sometimes straight out of the skin.

I manage to find a few avocados in the fridge, as my dad had bought ripen at home avos and well that only seemed to be ripe enough to eat today, just in time for the celebration cupcakes, perfect timing, don’t you think.

Verdict, I loved it, my mother loved it and well you know how my dad is, he didn’t want to touch it because it was chocolate, I must make a vanilla avo cupcake and then he will try it. His stint in the kitchen obviously didn’t work and he still doesn’t appreciate my cooking. Thanks to his cooking stunt, I now know the best way to threaten my family when they do not listen to me is to make my father cook. Shhh, don’t tell anyone.

Ingredients:

WET

• ¾ x cup unsweetened oat milk.
• 1 x tsp lemon juice.
• 1 x tsp espresso powder mixed 60ml x boiling water.
• 1/3 x cup mashed avocado.
• 1 x tbsp avocado oil.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.

DRY

• 1 x cup self raising flour, sifted.
• ¾ x cup castor sugar.
• 1/3 x cup cocoa powder.
• ¾ x tsp bicarbonate of soda.
• ½ x tsp baking powder.
• ¼ x tsp salt.

ICING

• ¼ x cup coconut oil, melted.
• ½ x cup icing sugar.
• 1/3 x cup cocoa powder.
• 1 x large avo, pitted and peeled.
• 2 x tsp vanilla essence.
• 1 – 2 x Tbsp water.
• ¼ x tsp salt.

Method:

• Whisk together the oat milk and the lemon jucie, set aside for 15 minutes, until it starts to curdle. This will create the “Vegan Buttermilk.”
• Place the vegan buttermilk and the remainder of the wet ingredients into a blender and blend till creamy.
• Pout into a mixing bowl and add in the dry ingredients.
• Whisk until a nice smooth batter is achieved.
• Using a mechanical ice cream scoop, scoop batter into a a muffin pan lined with cupcake casings.
• Pop into a preheated oven and bake at 180 degrees for 25 – 30 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes in the pan, before turning out onto a cooling ran and cooling completely before icing.

To make the icing:

• Place everything in a blender and blend till nice and smooth, thick and glossy. You might need to add a little more water.
• Ice the cooled cupcakes and decorate with desiccated coconut (optional).