Lemon cupcakes

Lemon Gem Cupcakes (no milk, no eggs, no nuts)
Note-some people consider coconut a nut. Since however our children do not react to it we have deemed it a fruit :)
prep time:
20 minutes
total time:
40 minutes
Makes 12-18 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

Cupcakes
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup canola oil (I generally like to substitute with soy free vegan margarine or coconut oil)
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup coconut milk (or rice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup lemon juice
1+ tablespoon lemon zest (I like super lemon flavor so the more the better)

Frosting
1/4 cup vegan margarine, softened (non hydrogenated)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted (sometimes I add more depending on how stiff I want my frosting)
some zest is also optional

mix cupcakes in order of ingredients then bake on 350 for 20 minutes.
This recipe works well for several types of cakes as well. I especially like it because it is super moist.

Vanilla cake
leave out lemon zest and cut lemon in half. Using fresh lemon usually works better then Real Lemon juice. The lemon juice and baking soda are your rising agent for this cake so you can't cut them completely.
Double or triple your vanilla depending on how strong of a flavor you want.
For the frosting instead of lemon juice use a teaspoon of Vanilla and couple table spoons of soy milk.

Strawberry cake
Same as the vanilla, but only use one teaspoon of vanilla and add two tsp strawberry flavoring.
Then use a teaspoon strawberry flavoring for the frosting. The cake above is a strawberry cake and I used Thia coconut milk in place of soy milk for the frosting.
To make the sand I just ground up graham crackers and dark brown sugar.
(note- The tree is made with tootsie rolls which do contain milk so do not use if milk allergy is your problem. We just removed it and gave our two milk allergy kids pieces from the side it didn't touch)