oh vanilla, where have you gone?

Any who have been reading my small blog knows my addiction to cookbooks. Especially when they yield fabulous recipes; however, when you follow a recipe exactly and it does a belly flop into the kiddie pool, it is annoying- to say the least. Babycakes cookbook has in the past always produced amazing, delicious stuff! The chocolate cupcakes are to die for! So I am unsure what happened this weekend- the vanilla cupcakes had good texture, but the color and taste was off; they tasted healthy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not what I am going for. And there wasn't even any rice flour! So I will be tinkering with this recipe before I post it online; I am posting pictures though, in case any who would peruse here have any thoughts about what I did exactly that cause the two tone color shift in the cupcakes.
Now I have noticed that many of the Amazon reviews for Babycakes absolutely revile Erin for her frosting and that angers me slightly. Yes coconut oil is expensive, however how often are you making cupcakes with frosting? Everything else in the cupcakes is things most gfree bakers have on hand. And I have to say I have never had an issue with the chocolate frosting. And I didn't really have an issue with the vanilla frosting either- with the small exception that I inadvertently turned it green. I can not do soy, so I substitute hemp protein powder for the soy milk powder-easy peasy, lemon cheesy, right-o? Normally yes. However, when I traveled to Whole Food this past weekend there were out of the vanilla flavor of my beloved hemp protein powder. A lovely person who was on staff recommended a new protein powder they just got in, also hemp based and has no soy, whey or sugar! Woohooo! I was so excited about this and the fact that it came in vanilla chai flavor I did not look at the ingredient list as closely as I should have- it also had chlorophyll in it along with the other vitamins. Vitamins are good! And in the chocolate frosting it gives me secret pleasure to know that people are eating healthy vitamins and minerals in their frosting. But while chlorophyll is great for your body, it has one small drawback to achieving a creamy white vanilla frosting- it is green. As in Kermit the frog GREEN, I tell you. (see picture above) The cookbook does tell you that chlorophyll is a great way to naturally color frosting and let me tell you works beautifully. I am just not sure green colored frosting is the way to go. And while it was creamy and fluffy, the one problem with the Babycakes frosting is that when it heat hits it, it melts.(It also doubles as sauce.) So my poor healthy cupcakes sitting on the picnic table yesterday after a wee bit looked covered in drippy moss. Needless to say, I have lots of them leftover and I will try one of the recipes that calls from crumbs! Hopefully, by the time I have added more agave and other ingredients they will have lost their odd healthy flavor and just taste sinfully delicious.