While I’m not much of a fan of the film The Black Cauldron, it wasn’t too difficult to think of a recipe for. The first thing that I thought of was “Cauldron Cakes” from Harry Potter– and yes, we’ll get there eventually 😉 — so I decided to take a chocolate cupcake recipe and do them up to look like cute little cauldrons.

For the cupcakes, you’ll need:

• 2 ¼ cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup applesauce
• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 cup soy milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water

And for the frosting, you’ll need:

• ½ cup vegan butter
• ¼ cup vegetable shortening
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• Green food coloring

This recipe made about 30 cupcakes, which was more than I was expecting, so you may want to consider halving it.

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare your muffin pan. To help these cauldrons look more like cauldrons, you may want to use black or brown cupcake liners.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then, add in the applesauce, olive oil, soy milk, and vanilla, and mix well. While mixing, add in the boiling water, and continue mixing until it is combined.

Scoop the batter into the cupcake tin, filling each one about 2/3 full, then bake for 18-21 minutes.

While your cupcakes are baking, prepare the buttercream by beating together the butter, shortening, salt, and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Then, beat in the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. Add in the milk, and green food coloring, and beat until it is light and fluffy.

Once your cupcakes are baked and cooled, use a small round cookie cutter or a cupcake corer to scoop out the center of each cupcake. Pipe green frosting into the center of each cupcake, adding more as desired. Top with some cute sprinkles! Typically, sprinkles are not vegan due to the confectioner’s glaze, but there are some sites that have specialty vegan sprinkles such as Baking Time Club. For these cupcakes, I ordered their “Monster Mash” mix (but they didn’t arrive so I had to use nonvegan sprinkles oops)

And enjoy!