Behold, the vegan chocolate cake recipe of your dreams! These vegan chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting are the perfect accompaniment to your next birthday celebration.
What I love about cupcakes is they're cake in a fun mini size and are great for sharing! Party guests will want to get their hands on one (or two) of these, ASAP! I dig the look of a pink cupcake wrapper and rainbow vegan-friendly sprinkles, but you can serve and decorate these however you'd like. I also think they look especially delectable on a cake stand platter - not that they'll last very long on it!
Watch the how-to video below or keep scrolling for the recipe.
vegan chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting
These cupcakes are perfectly moist and chocolatey! They're topped with a generous swirl of buttercream frosting that packs a ton of natural raspberry flavor.
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Servings: cupcakes
Ingredients
chocolate cupcake
- 1 C soy milk
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- ¾ C raw cane sugar
- ⅓ cup coconut oil
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 C unbleached all-purpose flour
- ⅓ C unsweetened dutch process cocoa powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
raspberry buttercream
- 1 C frozen raspberries, thawed
- ¼ C coconut oil, solid at room temperature (you can also use vegan butter softened to room temperature)
- 2 to 3 C powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- You can add all the cupcake batter ingredients listed above to a high powered blender like a Vitamix and mix until smooth. Alternatively, mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt in one bowl.
- In another bowl, mix the soy milk, vinegar, sugar, vanilla extract, and coconut oil (if doing this method, ensure you melt the oil to liquid) together in another bowl until smooth.
- Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined. Don't over mix. Small lumps in the batter are okay.
- Pour into a muffin pan with liners, each about ¾ full. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centre of a cupcake.
- Baking time may vary depending on your oven (ours were baked in a convection oven so they were closer to 15 minutes). A toothpick should come out clean from the centre of the cupcakes.
- Allow the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack completely before icing.
- I let my raspberries thaw in the fridge overnight. You need to push the raspberries through a sieve to get rid of the seeds and just use the juice, which is about 3 to 3 ½ tablespoons.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together 1 ½ cups of powdered sugar with half the portion of coconut oil until combined. While continuing to mix, add half of the raspberry juice and the vanilla extract and another 1 ½ cups of powdered sugar and the remaining coconut oil.
- You want a smooth yet stiff buttercream icing that will be easy to pipe. Add more raspberry juice and/or powdered sugar until the right consistency is achieved.
- You can pipe the icing with a piping bag or a zipper bag with a small corner snipped off. Or gently spread icing on top with a knife. Top with vegan friendly sprinkles, shredded coconut, dried fruit or other toppings of your choice!
- Store left over cupcakes in the fridge and remove from the fridge 10 to 15 minutes before serving again.
Brittany
This could very well be an ignorant question - but if I wanted these to be gluten free, what would I need to do?
Lauren Toyota
just use the 1 to 1 gluten free flour sub. Bob's red mill makes an all purpose substitute flour
Jacqueline
Is there a way to substitute the apple cider vinegar?
CA
Any suggestions for a substitute for coconut oil? My daughter is allergic.
Lauren Toyota
use vegetable oil
Sarah
Do you think you could freeze the cupcakes and then defrost before icing?
Lauren Toyota
hmmm I don't think so!? I worry about the consistency getting messed up from thawing. Better fresher! BUT again, I haven't tried it so if you were willing to, let me know what happens!
Sarah
Thanks, will do!
Tanya Koudelka
Made these last night and they were loved by all!! Will be making these again for sure. Thanks for the amazing recipes 🙂
BryanS
This recipe is fantastic! I love all your recipes and it is so great having someone experienced like you to figure out all the equivalencies. Have you ever done or considered doing a soaked sponge cake desert like a tiramisu?
There is this dessert I had at Walt Disney World that has sooo much cream and other non-vegan ingredients that I am a little intimidated to even try to figure it out. I am overseas right now working for the Army and have "jonesing" for a "Zebra Dome". The recipe can be found at https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2009/06/23/recipe-bomas-zebra-domes/
Do you think you can make this and see how it comes out? Or maybe just take a look at the recipe and suggest how I could make this vegan?
I mean, specifically, I don't know what will work for gelatin, and ganache. Pretty sure I can do a decent sponge cake (though if you have a favorite recipe that would be great too). Also the substitutes for egg...applesauce, flax seed, prunes, or EnerG egg replacer...can those be used when the recipe calls for just egg white?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Lauren Toyota
so glad you liked it! Well I actually have a tiramisu trifle in the cookbook that will be coming out Feb 2018! So unfortunately or fortunately you'll have to wait for our recipe 😉
Nina
I made these today and the cupcakes were delicious. The frosting...oh it was so sweet but still very yummy. I looove sweet stuff but this was just too much 😀
Jolie
I only made the frosting as I was making a different flavor. The icing was so good, you can't even tell it was vegan! I added quite a bit of raspberry, making my icing less stiff than I would have wanted. Though that was my fault, not the recipes. I will 100% be making it again! Thank you so much!