Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes Recipe

For chocolate lovers, nothing satisfies a craving better than a chocolate cupcake. The only problem? For those who opt to eat a vegan diet, it can be tricky. Chocolate is often paired with butter, milk, eggs, or cream to make a delicious dessert. Luckily, we have the perfect solution with this recipe for vegan chocolate cupcakes.

Those who eat vegan are committed to leaving anything with an animal origin out of their diet (via Healthline). And that certainly doesn't just mean meat. It means that those common ingredients in baking such as butter, milk, and eggs are out of the question as well. 

This quick and delicious cupcake recipe makes vegan baking easy. With a few simple swaps, it utilizes mashed banana and coconut milk to add great moisture and texture to a chocolate cupcake. Regular butter is also replaced with vegan butter to make a tasty frosting, offering the full cupcake and frosting experience. They're incredibly moist and flavorful, and when you share them with family and friends, they may not even be able to tell they're vegan! 

Ready to get to baking? First, grab all the ingredients for these vegan chocolate cupcakes. For this recipe, you'll need, white sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, ¼ cup mashed banana, oil, coconut or almond milk, hot water, one stick of vegan butter, powdered sugar, and pure vanilla extract.

The mashed banana works to replace the typical egg used in this cupcake recipe, along with swapping out regular milk for coconut milk or almond milk. 

With all of the ingredients ready, it's time to dive in. First, preheat the oven to 350 F.

Add the white sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder to a large mixing bowl. Use a hand mixer or whisk to mix the dry ingredients until well-combined and smooth. 

To finish the batter, mix in the mashed banana, oil, and ½ cup coconut milk. Lastly, stir in the hot water. This will thin out the batter, but that's what you want — it adds great moisture to the cupcakes.

Line a cupcake pan with paper liners, and divide the batter between the 12 cupcake wells. Bake the cupcakes for 18 minutes, until the tops are set. Once baked, remove the cupcakes from the oven and set them aside to cool completely. 

Make the vegan vanilla frosting while the cupcakes cool. Cream the softened vegan butter in a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer, or use a stand mixer. Mix in 1 cup powdered sugar, along with 2 tablespoons coconut milk and the vanilla extract. Continue to mix in the rest of the powdered sugar, gradually, until the frosting comes together. Turn the speed up on the mixer to whip the frosting until fluffy. 

Once the cupcakes have fully cooled, top them with the prepared vegan vanilla frosting. Use a spatula to frost the cupcakes, or put the frosting in a piping bag. After frosting the cupcakes, dust them with cocoa powder and top them with rainbow sprinkles, if desired.