Lots of Sugar

I knew I would be taking the week I have off from school for spring break as an opportunity to bake A LOT. I just didn't expect to be eating soooooooo much sugar! There has been absolutely no shortage of vegan desserts in my house for the past few days and its truly disgusting, but I couldn't be happier.

I wanted to try the S'mores Cupcakes from VCTOTW ever since I got the book (last year!), but sort of forgot about them until last week when I needed to make a dessert to bring over to my aunt's house. We were going over for dinner and I knew my younger cousins would be there, so this was the perfect treat! I also got to use my cupcake carrier that I got for the holidays last December, which is so cool by the way! I never imagined being able to transport cupcakes without one of them getting smushed! Anyways, I used a combo of Annie's Homegrown Chocolate Chip Bunny Grahams and Health Valley Amaranth Graham Crackers for the cupcake batter and crumbs on top, which was nice since the chocolate chips in the bunny grahams added the tiniest bit of chocolate flavor to the cupcakes themselves. I also topped the cupcakes with the rich chocolate ganache from VCTOTW (I was worried the melty ganache would be to messy to transport these) and then the frosting. Also, I wanted these to taste a little more marshmallowy so I added about 1/4 c. of Ricemellow Creme to the buttercream and reduced the soymilk in the recipe to about 1-2 T. You can see in the first photo that one of the cupcakes in the corner (top right) is decorated a little differently. That one was my brothers first attempt ever at decorating with frosting! He was so proud of it and showed it off to my family for the entire night. When it was finally time for dessert, these went FAST. Seriously- within two minutes of setting these out on the dessert table, they were all gone! I can see why, though- they were perfectly chocolate, but still sweet and spicy from the cinnamon. If you have VCTOTW, go make these now! If you don't, go but the book! You'll totally understand why they're so great.

To add on to all of this chocolaty goodness, I made the Banana Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding from Vcon last night because I seem to have a constant bread pudding craving. I've mentioned before that I think bread pudding is an amazing culinary concoction, so that probably explains my love for it. So I made this and my dad was pretty excited since he loves bananas and anything chocolate, and I'm happy to say that this didn't disappoint! I used my hands to mix in the chocolate chips and bananas and was afraid that I may have mushed up the bread too much since it kinda turned into one mushy mess, but it actually made the bread pudding WAY better! Since the bread was really soaked and mushy, it made for a really creamy, flavorful pudding. And the melted chocolate chips didn't hurt either :)