Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes

February 3, 2023
Richard Makin
Dessert

35 mins
0.0

Need a slam-dunk dessert for your bae? For Valentine’s Day? For a birthday? We got you. If you’re not a baker, don’t sweat it. This recipe for colorful chocolatey cupcakes with vegan cream cheese frosting is super easy. You just need a muffin tin and some paper liners. Hand one of these red velvet cupcakes to your bae and they’ll absolutely love you for it!

Ingredients

Cakes

1 2/3 cups (200 g) plain white all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp psyllium husk powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 cup (170 ml) plain unsweetened soy milk
1/4 cup (65 g) plain unsweetened vegan yogurt
2 tsp distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup (60 g) sunflower or vegetable oil
2/3 cup (130 g) superfine sugar or granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp red food dye

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/3 cup (80 g) vegan butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (180 g) vegan cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 1/3 cups (400 g) icing or powdered sugar

Instructions

For the cakes, preheat the oven to 350ºF (170ºC with fan). Line a cupcake or muffin tin with 12 liners. Red ones look really good here.
In a medium bowl, sieve or whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, psyllium husk powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a large measuring jug or a blender, combine the soy milk, yogurt, vinegar, oil, sugar, vanilla, and red food dye. Blend together until smooth, using an immersion blender or regular blender.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix together until just combined. Try not to overmix. Divide the batter between the cupcake liners. To make sure the cupcakes are all the same size, it helps to use a cookie scoop for this part.
Place the pan in the oven and bake until the batter is risen and set, 20-25 minutes. Remove and let the cupcakes cool completely in the pan.
For the frosting, place the butter and cream cheese in the bowl of a mixer. Using the paddle attachment or a hand mixer, beat together on high speed until light and fluffy. It should take at least 3 minutes. When the frosting is nice and fluffy, beat in the vanilla. Then beat in the icing (powdered) sugar little by little. Don’t be tempted add it all in one go, or the frosting will split.
Transfer the frosting to a piping bag and decorate the cooled cupcakes however you wish. For the look in the photo, I sliced off a small amount of cake from the top of each cupcake, then crumbled it up and sprinkled it on top of the frosting.

For the red color, India Tree makes natural red food dye from vegetable pigments. Highly recommended to avoid those fake food colorings!

If you have trouble finding psyllium husks, look in the supplements aisle of your store. It’s usually near the fiber supplements such as Metamucil. Don’t worry. All the psyllium is doing in this recipe is binding the ingredients together in the absence of eggs!

It might seem like 1 Tbsp red food dye is a lot, but it’s essential for getting that red velvet cake color.

Cream cheese frosting is an important part of red velvet cake. But beware! It’s super important that you use your vegan cream cheese at room temperature. Otherwise it’ll split. Remove your cream cheese from the fridge at least 4 hours before using it.