I am so excited that this recipe turned out as good as it did, actually it turned out way better than I expected! I know you are probably thinking they don’t look very yummy, but no lie – these cupcakes are delicious! My husband, a couple of our friends and my toddler all thought so too 🙂
These cupcakes are super easy to make and guess what? They are made from scratch! No baking out of a box here. I so much prefer baking from scratch as then I know exactly what goes into everything and I can tweak things and make them a tiny bit healthier.
This recipe is one I created yesterday and I based it from the recipe I created almost 3 years ago when I made over 200 cupcakes for my wedding. Yep, over 200 from scratch! More on that little adventure here.
But instead of a white chocolate chip vanilla cupcake, I made a much healthier version – and this one includes hidden veggies – 5 cups of fresh spinach! oh yeah! Some other adjustments I made this time around: I substituted both coconut oil and applesauce for the butter, and agave syrup for sugar. I also made these completely organic which is really easy to do nowadays when there are so many affordable organic options popping up in the stores. (I will be writing a post soon on how to eat organically on a budget).
Not only are these green cupcakes perfect for St. Patricks Day – but they are perfect for any day! Oh and they are Dairy Free as well! And if you use Gluten Free flour, they can be gluten free too.
- 1/2 cup coconut oil
- 2/3 cup agave syrup
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 5 cups fresh spinach
- 1/2 cup applesauce
- Icing:
- almond milk
- icing sugar
- Using an electric mixer, blend the coconut oil, agave syrup and vanilla until smooth. Add eggs and continue mixing.
- Mix the flour and baking powder together in separate bowl then slowly pour into the mixer.
- In a blender or vitamix, puree the applesauce and spinach until smooth.
- Add the puree spinach mixture to the mixer and mix for about 30 seconds.
- Preheat oven to 325
- Fill 12 muffin cups (I used the silicone baking cups, but paper liners will work too) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Make sure you use a cake tester to test before removing from the oven.
- Icing:
- tbsp almond milk
- cups icing sugar.
- Depending on how much icing you’d like, you will need to add more of both the milk and icing sugar. Use an electric mixer and add a tiny amount of milk at a time. A little goes a long way here. Keep adding the icing sugar until you get your desired consistency.
[…] For these particular cupcakes I thought it would be appropriate to use my new Green Vanilla Cupcakes recipe 🙂 […]