Vegan Halloween Cupcakes

These Vegan Halloween Cupcakes are the perfect treat to make with your little one or for a party this Halloween. Get the recipe below.

Trick or treat

At Halloween it’s fun to bake spooky treats whether you’re hosting a Halloween party or not. Perhaps you’re staying in to watch horror movies and need snacks? Or maybe you just want to do some Halloween themed baking with the kids.

These Vegan Halloween Cupcakes are perfect however you’re deciding to celebrate Halloween. They’re light and fluffy with a sweet buttercream top both coloured jet black. Sprinkles and rice paper spiderwebs add some spooky flair to the top.

How to make cupcakes

There are a couple of different methods for making cake batter for the Halloween cupcakes. There’s the creaming method and the all in one method. I prefer the creaming method as I think it gives a more light and fluffy texture.

First you beat the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until super creamy. You then whisk in the vanilla, lemon juice, black food colouring and milk. At this point it will look curdled. Don’t worry, stick with it!

You then fold in the flour and bicarbonate of soda.

Working quickly you want to fill your cupcake cases with the batter before getting them in the oven.

You need to work quickly because you don’t want to lose the bubbles created by the liquids hitting the bicarbonate of soda.

Bake in the centre of the oven and remove once they are bouncy to the touch and a skewer comes out clean.

How to decorate cupcakes for Halloween

Black sponge

It’s easy to make your cupcakes black – simply use a black food gel. I don’t recommend Dr Oetker’s black food colouring. Even using a full tube your cakes will just be grey rather than black.

Instead use a brand like Sugarflair or Wiltons for a jet black colour.

Black icing

You will need the same black food gel to make your icing as black as the nights sky. Beat it well into your buttercream once it has already been mixed and is creamy.

Once it’s well incorporated simply transfer to your piping bag.

Be warned, black icing can stain clothes which is rather horrifying. It can also turn your tongue black too so you may look rather ghastly after eating one!

Variations

If you don’t want to use artificial colouring you could make the sponge (and icing) with chocolate to make them dark but not black.

Just replace 2 tbsp of the flour with cocoa powder and 1 tbsp of the icing sugar with 1 tbsp of cocoa powder.

Sprinkles and cake toppers

To decorate my cupcakes I’ve used spiderwebs made from rice paper.

I’ve also used vegan sprinkles in white, green, purple and orange. I feel this colour combination screams Halloween!

Be mindful that not all sprinkles are vegan. This is because the coating that makes them look shiny is made out of insects. Yuck. These days sprinkles will be labelled vegan if they are suitable.

Vegan baking tips

In cake recipes eggs are primarily there as a raising agent. It’s whisked with butter and sugar to make a light fluffy mix that is full of little air bubbles.

When making vegan cupcakes we therefore need ingredients that will act as a leavening agent.

This recipe uses bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice. If you don’t have lemon juice you could use white vinegar instead. You just want an acid that will react with the bicarbonate of soda to create lots of frothy air bubbles.

For the full range of vegan baking tips, check out my big vegan baking guide.

The recipe