Eggless Chocolate cupcake - so light you will bite

Valentine's day has never been this exciting for us. My dotzy has been having week long celebrations at her pre-school and has been gloating about the fact that she got to be the Valentine Queen too. I have had my share of education getting to know what a "valentine" is that kids give each other. It isnt such a anxious subject as it used to be in college.
The dotzy had a party at school and when I saw that most of the party supplies had a parent signed up for already, I decided to put in my name in the "Others" section and chose to bring them cupcakes.

I must admit that I am not really sure when it comes to children and sweets to know what they like. The reason for this has to do with the pallette my dotzy acquired from her dad which ensures she doesnt have a sweet tooth. I chose cupcakes for the simple reason that I find them the easiest to make. I have made a few varieties of muffins already but never a cupcake really. The biggest difference I found in this cupcake in comparison to a banana walnut muffin was in how dense the latter was and how light the former was. I made them eggless and also used oil instead of butter. For serving at the party I did use a readymade whipped frosting since I ran out of Vanilla. And since I did not have an electric beater, I did not want to slave at getting the frosting to the right pointyness.
Once V knew that I had signed up for cupcakes, she started me on a lecture (week-long) of how the cupcakes had to look. White on white said my darling but I was on the last few tiny drops of vanilla extract so in the last minute she heaved a huge sigh and said it was ok for light brown cupcakes. Ofcourse after baking them she was a little taken aback by the dark brown colour but she had licked the cupcake mix before it went into the oven and therefore knew they would taste good! She was also enthused to assist me on this task. She is more a supervisor than a helper I tell you.

To all her friends with love

And I assume they all love it with frosting (going by pure hearsay on how they devoured frosted cupcakes that were served by one boy's parents for his birthday)

Eggless Butter-less Chocolate cupcake

Serving : 15-17 medium sized cupcakes or 30 mini cupcakes
Prep Time: 30 mins Cook Time: 10-20 mins (depending on size of cupcake)

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup All Purpose Flour
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp Cocoa powder
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup Sugar (I used fine grandulated. If using confectioner's sugar you could add another 1/4 cup)
1 cup Milk (I used 2%)
1 tbsp Vinegar
1/2 cup Vegetable oil
1 tsp Vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and line a muffin tray with paper liners.
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder. Sieve it all together and set aside
3. In another bowl combine the milk and vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes. The milk will curdle.
4. Then to this add the sugar and oil and mix till the sugar dissolves. Could take upto 5 minutes. 
5. Mix in the vanilla extract. 
6. Now add the dry ingredient mix into the wet ingredient mix and whisk till well combined. And some more. 
7. Pour the mix using a spoon into the cupcake liners till 2/3 full. 
8. Bake for around 10-12 minutes for mini cupcakes. Mine was done exactly on the 10th minute.Or Bake for around 18-20 minutes for the medium sized cupcakes. Mine was done at the 17th minute. 
9. Remove the pan from the oven and leave to cool for 2 minutes. Remove the cupcakes (along with the liners) on to a wire cooling rack and allow it to cool completely. 
10. Serve it plain or frosted.