Devil's Food Cupcakes (Practically Raw)

How cute are these little devils?! I love them! These are from Amber's latest cookbook, Practically Raw Desserts, but fear not if you don't own a copy yet, because you can find the recipe here. I halved the recipe and ended up with twelve mini cupcakes. The ingredients are super simple and the instructions are very easy to follow! The "cake" consists basically of cocoa/cacao powder and almond and coconut flours, mixed with applesauce, sweetener, and flavorings, and the avocado-based frosting calls for little more than sweetener and cocoa. My cupcakes and frosting were flavored with almond extract because, well, it's me and I put almond extract in everything. My frosting didn't want to be very firm, so I added a couple of big pinches of coconut flour to show it who's the boss around here. That did it.

My taste buds were not sure about these at first. They thought "oh no, I can taste the applesauce", but after the third or fourth bite they thought "hey, I can taste the applesauce and it's yummy!" I've eaten four today already, so my taste buds are now officially fans of the applesauce + chocolate combo. The texture of the cake is really nice, and the frosting is smooth and creamy. If I had to describe the texture in a sentence, I would tell you that they are like naked cake truffles that are wearing nothing but a chocolate frosting hat. Let me take a bite and show you what they look like in there...

They are fabulous! Thank you for sharing the recipe, Amber! Today's cute creature is an elk we saw at Yellowstone National Park earlier this year. Just chilling in the water, doing elk stuff.