Mother’s Day meals: Desserts

Whether your mom’s a vegan, a vegetarian or an omnivore, she’ll love at least one of these cupcake recipes.

Tue, Apr 27 2010 at 5:08 PM EST

Photo: Becky Striepe

When I decided to do a three-part Mother’s Day meal topic and each day have something for the vegan mom, the vegetarian mom, and the omnivore mom, I didn’t think it through completely. The omnivore choice for each day was to include meat.

Obviously, I know that omnivores don’t have to eat meat all the time, but I had a theme going. Well, believe it or not, I’ve been able to stick to my theme. Thanks to all the cupcake fanatics out there, and all the bacon fanatics out there, I’m able to bring you a dessert that includes both finger licking icing and lip smacking salty meat.

I thought I’d go with all cupcake recipes here, because who doesn’t love a cupcake.

For the omnivore mom

Maple Bacon Cupcakes with Maple Frosting – Yes, you read that right. Bacon cupcakes. You may have even heard about them because if you follow any food trends, you can’t get away from all things bacon recently. There are many recipes for bacon cupcakes, but I chose this one because it sounded the most like it may be worth a try. Maple and bacon are flavors that go well together. Try to organic this cupcake up by using the best organic ingredients you can afford, and buy some bacon from a source you trust. If your omnivore mom won’t appreciate a bacon cupcake, you can always make her one of the other choices.

For the vegetarian mom

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting – What is about adding red food coloring to chocolate cake that suddenly makes it elegant? Maybe it’s just the word “velvet.” You may be hesitant to use traditional red food dye (I don’t blame you), but there are natural alternatives out there, like India Tree Natural Decorating Colors, that you can purchase.

These cupcakes are “topped with a dollop of cream cheese frosting.” I say, forget the dollop and show mom you appreciate her with a whole mess of cream cheese frosting on top of the cupcake.

For the vegan mom

Coconut Mango Cupcakes – My friend Becky concocted these cupcakes (she used a “dollop” of icing, too. What’s with that?). Using a basic vanilla cupcake recipe, she replaced soymilk with coconut milk and vanilla extract with coconut extract. Then she added dried, candied mango to the batter. Becky “may or may not have” eaten three of these unfrosted straight from the oven.