Vegan Funfetti Cupcakes

 

Looking for a quick and easy fun cupcake recipe? This post is for you! These fluffy, moist cupcakes are super tasty and you wouldn’t be able to tell they’re vegan! The sprinkles add a fun rainbow touch too.

The use of apple cider vinegar in this recipe might seem a little daunting but don’t worry, you can’t it at all in the final bake! Combining it with the oat milk in this recipe helps to mimic buttermilk (but in a vegan way!) to make the cakes super fluffy. 

One note though - make sure the sprinkles you use are vegan. These can be a little tricky to find as quite a few often contain the following non-vegan ingredients:

• Beeswax - Often used as a stiffening agent, this ingredient isn’t vegan due to being produced by bees
• Carmine / E120 / Cochineal / Crimson Lake - This is a red food colouring that gives a food a bright red shade, but it is not vegan due to being made from the dried bodies of female carmine bugs 
• Shellac - A glazing agent that makes foods shiny, but not vegan as it’s from female lac bugs
• Gelatine - these are usually in generic cake decorations rather than sprinkles, but I’m fairly sure I’ve seen gelatine crop up in sprinkles before! Gelatine isn’t vegan as it’s made from collagen from animal parts

So which sprinkles are vegan? For this recipe, I used Dr Oetker Unicorn Sprinkles which are labelled as vegan. Some other ones that you could use that are vegan are:

• Waitrose Stars and Confetti (Labelled veggie not vegan but look vegan by ingredient)
• Tesco Sprinkles Multi Coloured Stars (exactly the same ingredients as the one above!)
• Morrisons Sugar Stars (Again, the same as above…)
• ASDA Rainbow Star Sprinkles (ditto)

You might also be able to find some different ones online directly from baking companies.

This recipe took around half an hour to make, and made 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

• 120ml oat milk
• 1/2 TSP apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 TBSP vanilla essence
• 40g vegan butter, melted
• 140g self-raising flour
• 1/2 TBSP baking powder
• 100g granulated sugar
• 2 TBSP vegan sprinkles
• Pinch of salt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. In a bowl, add the apple cider vinegar and oat milk, a leave for around 5 minutes to curdle
3. In a different bowl, sieve the flour and baking powder, and then mix in the sugar and salt.
4. Melt the butter, and then add this to the flour-sugar mix along with the vanilla essence and the oat milk-vinegar mix
5. Stir well to combine until a batter is formed
6. Stir in the sprinkles
7. Place 12 cupcake cases into a cupcake tin and spoon the mixture evenly amongst each of them (~TBSP in each)
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown and a cake skewer comes out clean