Here is the healthy cupcake recipe that won’t let you down.
Cupcakes so soft and fluffy…
No one will ever guess that they’re low-fat!
I went through five or six attempts before finally achieving the results I wanted: a “no-fail” healthy vanilla cupcake recipe that both health-food eaters and junk-food eaters will love.
Above, a skinny vanilla cupcake with Healthy Glaze Icing.
You can have fun with this recipe: keep it simple, or add just a few ingredients to make blueberry cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, or even chocolate-chip cupcakes. Everyone should keep a good basic cupcake recipe in his or her arsenal.
Can be sugar-free, too!
Skinny Vanilla Cupcakes
(makes 9-10 cupcakes)
Or click if you’d prefer: Healthy Chocolate Cupcakes.
- 1 cup spelt flour, or white flour, or Arrowhead Mills gf mix (140g)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ener g powder, or 1 tbs ground flaxmeal
- 4 tbsp xylitol or sugar (54g)
- 2 Nunatural stevia packets (or 2 extra tbsp sugar)
- 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup plain or vanilla yogurt of choice (Silk or SoDelicious both work) (230g)
- 1/4 cup milk of choice (60g)
- 3 tbsp coconut or veg oil (can omit, but the cupcakes will be a bit gummy) (36g)
- add 1/2 tsp xanthan gum if using the gf mix
Preheat oven to 350 F, and grease muffin tins. Combine all wet ingredients with the energ or flax, and stir vigorously. In a separate bowl, combine all remaining dry ingredients, and mix very well. Pour wet into dry, and mix until just combined (don’t overmix). Cook 18-20 minutes, then let sit at least 10 before removing from muffin tins.
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Hi Chocolate-covered Kaite;
I made a double recipe last night, and mine didn’t rise much and have a convex appearance. In your experience, could this be from overmixing the batter?
I used a flax egg, as per your instructions, and oat flour. OH also I added chocolate chips.
They still taste good though, but dense… like a pancake.
Thank you!
I think it was probably due to your substitution of using oat flour 😕
I made these tonight! I used egg beaters instead of the Ener-g since I couldn’t find it. I topped it with the Reese’s pieces frosting. I think my hubby would have liked it more if had used milk chocolate chips in my frosting, but I thought they were fabulous!! I will try more recipes now.
Katie – I was gonna use Arrowhead Mills gluten-free all-purpose baking mix but when I checked the ingredients list I noticed that it already contains baking powder:
http://www.arrowheadmills.com/product/gluten-free-all-purpose-baking-mix
I don’t know how much baking baking powder is in the flour mix though. Do you know when your friend tried our your recipe using AM GF flour how much baking powder she used? Do I just omit all the leavening agent (including baking soda) from your recipe?
Thank you for your tip!
She said she just uses the flour in replacement of the flour I call for in a recipe. She never adds anything like xantham gum or takes a recipe ingredient away. Hope that helps!
Thanks. After you mix all the ingredients together, is your batter quite thick? I tried this recipe twice. The first time It was so thick (almost like bread dough) so I added 5 Tbsp almond milk to thin it out. That was a mistake as the inside never baked enough and the top rose and then fell so I tossed them away. The second time I followed everything based on your weight measurements for ingredients. But I only have gluten-free flour so I used my own GF flour mix. Also I added regular Greek yogurt (dairy) to my almond dairy-free yogurt to reach a total of 230 grams for the yogurt as I did not have enough non-dairy yogurt. Other than that I sub real cow milk but with the same weight. The result was a very very thick bread dough like batter. I baked it anyway and it turned out more like muffins than cupcakes. The inside was tender with good flavor though. It did not rise as much as those in your photos though. So I am thinking it’s probably better to follow everything exactly as in your recipe in order to get the same result. Since I only bake gluten-free, I guess I would have to go get a pack of the same brand in order to yield the same result? Thanks.
Hi Katie! I made these cupcakes yesterday with the intent of bringing them to a party. However, they turned out very gummy and also didn’t rise very much. I used white flour, Stonyfield Organic plain yogurt, a regular egg (subtracting 3 tbsp of Skim Plus milk), Splenda for the extra 2 tbsp of sweetener (I used granulated sugar for the first 4 tbsp), and canola oil. Aside from the gummy consistency and lack of a rise, the oil was very much present in the taste of the cupcake. Could this be because of the ingredients I used? I am going to try making these again because they were very easy to make and they are much healthier than other cupcake recipes, but maybe next time I will omit the oil or otherwise use very little. On another note, thank you so much for putting so much effort into all of your recipes! I am always excited to receive an email notification from your blog 😀
Unfortunately, I have never tried the recipe with a real egg so I really don’t know how it would turn out 🙁
Looks great! Would almond or coconut flour work as well?
Sorry, I’ve not tried it.
Is the flax necessary for the recipe to be successful? I’m not a flax fan & I’m NOT vegan…lol. Should I use an egg???
Sorry, I really don’t know because I’ve never tried.
You can use a chia egg. Just use 1 tbsp chia instead of 1 tbsp flax. I did that, and the cupcakes turned out nicely. 😉
Sorry, just noticed this comment was from over a year ago. Whoops…
I made these using 1 1/4 cup soy milk instead of 1 cup of yogurt and 1/4 cup of milk. I didn’t have yogurt and I needed to quickly make some cupcakes for a birthday party my girls were attending (they’re allergic so I provide allergen-free cupcakes for them). They turned out perfectly! Yum!
Hello Katie! I made them three times (a little bit adapted from your recipe) now, a simple vanilla version, coloured and glazed sylvester muffins and today, ultra lemon muffins! I swear, they were so good I already ate three of them. Now there’s only five left, and I bet it’ll be three when my father comes home…
I used low-fat margarine in place of the oil and they didn’t come out gummy. I also glazed them with powdered sugar and lemon icing.
I just made these- only I didn’t have any yogurt, so I substituted with applesauce. It came out like an apple-vanilla-muffin type thing. haha. Still good, though.
I just made these Wednesday. I did them in mini-cupcake papers, for my daughter’s preschool Valentine’s party. Mine fell pretty badly, so am not sure if I didn’t bake them long enough, or what happened. Two things I did differently (other than size) is that I added the ground flaxseed directly to my mixer bowl, rather than using 2-3 different bowls, AND I used homemade yogurt (which isn’t quite as thick as store-bought).
Do you think one or both of those things might have caused mine to fall? I did bake them approx 15 min.