Healthy Hostess Cupcakes!
Hostess cupcakes iced with Hot Chocolate Butter.
Along with yesterday’s Healthy Cookie Dough Dip, I brought these cupcakes to Sunday’s pirate party.
For a while now, I’d been looking for an excuse to try making a healthier version of the popular creme-filled cupcakes. So when I discovered I could stretch the “yo ho/ ho ho” pun and pass these off as pirate-themed, I knew they had to be made. Unlike Hostess’ cupcakes, mine are whole-grain, low in fat and calories, and free of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats.
But seriously, people will eat them up!!
Healthy Hostess Cupcakes
Inspired by My Favorite Chocolate Cupcakes
- 1 cup spelt, white, or Bob’s gf flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp plus 1/8 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar or xylitol
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 and 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 and 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt of choice, such as SoDelicious
- 1/4 cup applesauce
- 3 tbsp oil
- 1/2 cup milk of choice
- marshmallow fluff – I use my Vegan Marshmallow Fluff
Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients, then add wet – excluding marshmallow fluff. Don’t overmix. Pour into cupcake tins, and bake for 15-20 minutes. Allow cupcakes to cool, then cut or poke holes in the tops and scoop in the cream. Re-cover the tops. (Recipe continues below.)
Frost cupcakes with warmed Hot Chocolate Butter or with melted chocolate chips. Then put the cakes in the fridge for the frosting to harden. Once hard, you can use an icing writer for the tiny squiggles if you wish. Yes, I know the icing isn’t healthy. But it’s only like a 1/8 tsp, so I still feel justified in calling these cupcakes healthy.
An alternative to the creme:
Try stuffing them with Healthy Cookie Dough Dip.
Or, you could imitate some of the people at the party and dunk these cupcakes into the cookie dough dip. Sugar on top of sugar. So much for this being a healthy dessert blog!
Yum! These look delicious and so authentic!
Those are beautiful looking and bring me back a few years!!! My mom and I used to share a pack of them growing up!
OH wow! These are gorgeous:) I’m needing a chocolate fix today, I can feel it, so I might be whipping up a batch of these!
these are so creative! i love it, i will have to try and make them! i have never poked holes in my cupcakes, but i guess i have to try it now! 🙂
I want a cupcake!!!!!! These are delicious- looking, as usual!! I must make it! 😀 Soon! 😀
Holy chocolate – these look amazing! I think these sound like a great treat to bring to work to share (so I don’t eat the whole batch). 🙂
Yo ho ho indeed! Love it!
These look amazing!!! That picture with the glaze dripping down the side has me seriously craving a cupcake!
They look so pretty too!!! …. Yo-ho-ho! 🙂 You’re so smart!!!
Wow! You certainly are the “hostess” with the mostest! (cheesy, I know) But these look absolutely delicious! Do you think you could put your coconut whipped cream in them?
YES!!! I actually thought about that… but then I know a lot of crazy people don’t like coconut, so I went with the safer alternative of the marshmallow creme.
I’m so glad I checked the comments before asking my question. I’m in Australia and have never seen marshmallow creme. I was going to ask about an alternative. So thank you ‘Anon’ and Katie! I can happily make and use whipped coconut cream. 🙂
Oh, and this recipe looks devine. I love that you manage to create healthier versions of even the most wicked of treats.
Thank you Katie!
Um yes please!! Send them all my way! I swear I won’t eat them all in one sitting … or I’ll try not to!
Oh me, oh my! I know I’ll be making these for my little boy, sometime soon. Whoohoo!
You can bet I cringed initially at the recipe title. 😛 “Cream?! NOOO!” And then I realized it was marshmallow cream… and all was right in the world again, haha.
Once again, the “visuals” here are stunning! Not only are the photos amazing, but you are getting better and better at food styling and decorating with each passing day…
I’ve never had a Hostess cupcake, but the squiggle on top is so cute. 🙂
Oh Jenny, never fear. I love being vegan so much… I have no plans to ever change :).
Oh my… these cupcakes Are my favorite of the packaged dessert variety! Must try this out. 🙂
yes, please, I want one 🙂
Avast and set sail for the land of Texas, mateys! We be going’ fer the treasure! Nay, not gold, but cream-filled cupcakes. A prize above rubies, me hearties!
What say you? Aye, it be true. Texas be too far and too hot fer the likes of us. (Plus we be too scurrilous and scoundrel-like for the fair Katie!) Change course! Set course fer Kroger, me lads! We’ll be creatin’ our own treasure, aaaaarrgh!
Ok seriously, funniest comment ever.
I wish I could reply in pirate speak, but I am lousy with the language :(. I wonder if Rosetta Stone could help me there…
Arrrrr! 🙂
That would be so great: Rosetta Stone for Pirate-Speak!