Chocolate vegan cupcakes with buttercream frosting

You’ll need only 9 basic pantry ingredients to make these easy chocolate vegan cupcakes with buttercream frosting (plus an extra 4 ingredients for the buttercream), and of course the frosting is a totally optional extra. For a snack we forgo the frosting, but if its a celebration we lather it on. Of course.

I made these back in blackberry season in Australia,  6 months ago, but of course in in the Northern hemisphere the blackberries are ripe and it is tea perfect time to bake these Chocolate vegan cupcakes with buttercream frosting. In Summer it is a daily practice of ours to go for an early morning walk to harvest the sweet juicy fruit on the vines growing around town, and my freezer still has tubs full of our frozen harvest. Even through the blackberry bush is a noxious weed here, I am (perhaps a little selfishly) grateful that i get to pick this amazing little fruit for free, and show my children how to harvest natures bounty when you find.

There is a lot to be said for picking fruit from nature. It is not just about the actual enjoyment, the berry stained hands or the connection to where our food grows- but the deliberate attention to picking food from where it comes from in order to cut down on plastic waste.

What ingredients do I need for the Chocolate vegan cupcakes with buttercream frosting

Keeping this post short and sweet today. These chocolate vegan cupcakes with buttercream frosting are honestly so easy, use no hard-to-find ingredients, are chocolaty, moist, delicious, dairy free, egg free, sweetened with coconut sugar and don’t use flax or chia eggs.

Here is what you will need:

• Plant based milk (I used Bonsoy)- you can use any milk, but lower fat milks (like rice) might alter the crumb of teh cupcakes
• Light flavoured oil– I used olive oil, but sunflower or grape seed would be fine too. I avoid ‘vegetable oil’ as it is almost always filled with genetically modified canola or soy bean oil
• Apple cider vinegar– the use of vinegar in combination with baking powder replaces egg for this recipe, so please don’t omit the vinegar. You can use white vinegar too.
• Coconut sugar– I love the flavour of coconut sugar, and it can easily be substituted for brown or rapadura sugar too.
• Vanilla extract– always!
• Plain flour– need I say more?
• Cacao powder or doth processed cocoa, which ever you prefer.
• Baking powder, baking soda and salt- the usuals
• For the optional butter cream– vegan butter, icing sugar, more vanilla and berries.

Thats it! If you have all the ingredients in the pantry, happy baking. As always, we welcome any feedback, questions or reviews below and we endeavour to reply to you ASAP.

If you’re after some other vegan snack food, you may like:

• Healthy peanut butter fudge 
• Superfood seed snack bars (nut free) 
• No bake red velvet slice 
• Healthy almond butter blondies 

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