We made a vegan strawberry cake and that was a huge success so it made perfect sense to try some vegan strawberry cupcakes too!
And these were just as good!
I initially thought I would try something a little different from the cake recipe. The cake recipe uses strawberry purée and a little strawberry flavoring and pink food coloring, but I thought it might be nice to try a strawberry reduction, so basically to put strawberry purée on the stove and cook it until it reduces by half.
I was hoping that it would intensify the strawberry flavor (and color) so that you could avoid the use of strawberry extract/flavoring and pink food color altogether!
Alas, (is it weird to use the word ‘alas’? 
) it was not a success. I didn’t think the strawberry flavor was any more powerful as a result of the strawberry reduction and the color didn’t hold either.
And considering it takes heaps more time to reduce strawberry purée rather than just using the purée as is, it didn’t seem like a worthwhile time investment.
So the recipe you see before you is basically the strawberry cake recipe adapted for cupcakes. 
Which is not an issue really considering the cake is so darn good!
And of course the cupcakes are topped with strawberry frosting piped on and sliced strawberries!
And since these vegan strawberry cupcakes are pink, they would suit a romantic occasion quite well I reckon! So you know, there may be one of those coming quite soon (nudge nudge wink wink!).
Or if you’re reading this post when Valentines Day is not right on the horizon, well anytime is a good time for romance don’t you think?
So I think you’ll love these beautiful vegan strawberry cupcakes, they are:
- Pretty
- Pink
- Spongey
- Moist (and gosh can I just say there is nothing wrong with the word ‘moist’?)
- Romantic
- Strawberry!
Okay so I didn’t reinvent the wheel with any of those descriptors, are strawberry cupcakes actually ‘pink’ and ‘strawberry’? Hahaha, but you know, if you were doing a quick skim those are some of the salient points! Basically these are gorgeous looking and taste divine. Does that work? 
Keep them covered at room temperature where they will last for a few days or covered in the fridge where they will last for up to a week (but they’re still best in the first few days).
So let us know what you think of these pretty pink vegan strawberry cupcakes! Post a comment down below and if you have any questions fire away.
Rate the recipe if you make it and let us know how it turns out!
For more deliciously perfect vegan cupcakes, check out these great recipes:
- Vegan Funfetti Cupcakes
- Vegan Banana Cupcakes
- Coffee Cupcakes
- Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes
- Vegan Pumpkin Cupcakes
- Vegan Lemon Cupcakes
And there’s heaps more! Just search ‘cupcakes‘ to see all the gorgeous cupcakes we’ve made!
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Vegan Strawberry Cupcakes
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 25 mins
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 12
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
These pretty pink vegan strawberry cupcakes are deliciously spongey and moist and packed with strawberry flavor! Topped with a delicious strawberry frosting these are perfect for any special occasion.
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
- 2 cups (250g) + 3 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 1 cup (200g) White Sugar
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 cup (232g) Strawberry Purée*
- 2 tsp Strawberry Extract*
- 1/3 cup (80ml) Olive Oil (or other vegetable oil)
- 1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 Flax Egg
- 1 Tbsp Pink or Red Food Coloring (optional)
For the Strawberry Frosting:
- 3 cups (375g) Powdered (Confectioners) Sugar
- 1/3 cup (75g) Vegan Butter
- 1 tsp Strawberry Extract
- 2 Tbsp + 1 tsp Strawberry Purée
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, baking soda and salt.
- Then add the strawberry purée, strawberry extract, oil and vinegar.
- Prepare the flax egg by mixing 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed meal with 3 Tbsp Hot Water and allowing to sit for a minute to become gloopy.
- Add in the flax egg and the pink or red food colouring.
- Mix. The batter will be very thick, too thick for a whisk so just stir with a spoon until well mixed, being careful not to overmix the batter.
- Line a cupcake tray with cupcake liners and divide the batter evenly between them.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of one of the cupcakes comes out clean.
- Transfer to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool completely before frosting.
- Add the powdered sugar, vegan butter, strawberry essence and 2 Tbsp of strawberry purée to the mixing bowl of an electric mixer. Starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until the frosting is smooth. Only add in the extra strawberry purée if your frosting is too thick. If it’s too thin, add in more powdered sugar.
- Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes and decorate with slices of strawberry.
Notes
*To make strawberry purée add strawberries to the food processor (leaves cut off) and purée. I didn’t have as many strawberries this time as I did when I made my strawberry cake so I had to be quite exact with it. Around 10.5oz (300g) of strawberries puréed made enough for the cupcakes and frosting. But if you make a bit more, it’s awesome to just eat the leftovers as well.
*Strawberry extract may also be called strawberry essence or strawberry flavoring.
*If you choose not to use the food coloring it won’t have an effect on the taste or texture, it just won’t be pink.
- Category: Dessert, Cupcakes
- Cuisine: Vegan
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Cupcake (of 12)
- Calories: 361
- Sugar: 48.6g
- Sodium: 245mg
- Fat: 9.4g
- Saturated Fat: 1.4g
- Carbohydrates: 67.5g
- Fiber: 1.3g
- Protein: 2.6g
I will try to use juice from boiled beetroot for coloring. Hopefully it will work.
Hi Alison! What color do you think these will be without the food coloring? I’m trying to make mini strawberry bundt cakes just with a glaze of some sort, so I don’t think I want them bright pink. Haven’t found a recipe -specifically- for a vegan strawberry bundt cake that looks particularly great, so I may end up playing around and modifying a different vegan fruity cake thing, or a nonvegan strawberry bundt cake recipe, and if you have any suggestions for that from your blog I’d appreciate it too! Thanks (:
Hi Heather, without food coloring it’s more just like a vanilla cake in color with a subtle hint of pink. The color doesn’t come through very strongly without the food coloring.
Is there any way of using something other than strawberry extract because no place sells it around where I live.
You can leave it out or replace it with vanilla extract. 🙂
Hi.. Something I recently learned for fruit flavored frosting is to get freeze dried fruit (little bag of freeze dried snack strawberries or even have them in the baby food isle!)… Smash them up good or mix in food processor with some powdered sugar, and then use that as the powdered sugar in the frosting!! I have seen several kinds of feeeze dried fruits in snack bags even at the dollar store. Works great!! Then you don’t have the watered down part from the fruit either. Love your recipes btw.. Have substituted Gluten free flour with success!!
Hi Brandy, thanks for sharing! I think freeze dried strawberries would work great! Unfortunately I can’t ever find them here but if you can get them I think it would be great. So glad you like the recipes! 🙂
I just made these for my sister’s birthday. I used ColorKitchen Pink food coloring and they came out beautifully colored. Are these cupcakes more of a dense cake? My first batch of frosting separated. Perhaps I had my Kitchenaid stand mixer on too high of a speed. Gonna give it a go again in a bit.
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So glad the color was good! No, they are supposed to be more light and fluffy, not dense at all. If you didn’t already I would highly recommend weighing the flour, if you accidentally use too much that can certainly cause a more dense result. I’m not sure about the frosting, my guess would be the brand of vegan butter used. All the best! 🙂
Separating/curdling in frosting usually means that not all of your ingredients were the same temperature.
Excellent recipe!!! I didn’t use the strawberry essence because it wasn’t at my local grocery store, but the cupcakes were still great. In fact, I can’t imagine them being better. The frosting was delicious and was just the right consistency. The red food coloring is definitely a must (I used only about 1 tsp), even though I shy away from artificial ingredients – these cupcakes just need to be red!
★★★★★
Thanks so much for sharing and the awesome review Alicia! 🙂
Can I substitute the all purpose flour for whole wheat flour or almond flour?
Whole wheat might work, I’m not sure. But almond flour no. A gluten-free all purpose flour blend is going to be the best bet if you want it to be gluten free.
Hi Allison! Making these beautiful cupcakes this weekend for my moms 60th birthday since she loves strawberry! Can you tell me is vegan margarine okay to use in place of vegan butter? I’m finding it tricky to find the vegan butter in stores but I have the margarine.
Thank you!
Hi Odette, yes definitely margarine is just fine! All the best! 🙂
OMG! These cupcakes were so delicious! The icing held up well and the strawberry flavour and colour was amaaazing 🙂 My mom was so excited to eat them, plus my niece and nephew and all other family members, who are not vegan wanted seconds! Thanks for the amazing recipe! 🙂
★★★★★
Wonderful to hear that! Thanks for the amazing review. xo
I ran out of strawberries after making the cupcakes. How important is the strawberry purée for the frosting?
Hi Crystal, you could switch the frosting for another cupcake frosting like our strawberry vanilla frosting on our vegan vanilla cupcakes (no strawberry purée needed). 🙂
Do you think I can sub frozen strawberries? Or maybe purée them and reduce them on the stove?
I think you can, but just thaw them out first and dry off with a paper towel and then purée as normal in the food processor.
I was so proud of these! I never make cupcakes! Never from scratch either. Much less vegan. The batter color was gorgeous and delicious as was the icing! I accidentally cooked it a fewish…minutes longer cause my son walked in and we started talking lol.. anyway so they had a slight chewiness to top but inside was perfect! Took them to a family dinner. Big hit! In fact cousin said he liked the top of cupcake slightly overdone. lol Now that I have another carton of strawberries, I want to make some more and time it just right! I can’t wait to try some of these other cupcake recipes! Fun!!
★★★★★
Fantastic Diana! Go glad they were a success. Thanks so much for the awesome review. 🙂
Thanks alot the recipe is great but i am wondering why my strawberry cupcakes turned brown just like chocolate cupcake!!!the smell the flavour and the moist and spongy texture t is wow but the color is surprising although i used a little bit of red coloring
Hi Amal, I have found the color to be brown if you don’t add red or pink food coloring, perhaps you used too little?
Hi Alison I absolutely love all your recipes! I was wondering if you can use I think it’s called freeze dried strawberry that you can make into a powder and it’s 100% natural in place of flavoring and red dye but if not are the flavoring and red dye considered vegan? I’m kinda new to vegan baking
★★★★★
Hi Cindy, I definitely think you could use that in the frosting! I can’t get freeze dried strawberries where I am so it’s not something I’ve tried but I have seen other recipes use it and it looks great! I’m not sure about using that in the cake itself though. If you want to omit the color from the cake you can absolutely do it though. Most red food dyes are vegan these days but read ingredients to make sure and you can always contact the company as well if you have doubts, I have contacted Foster Clarks (UK) and McCormicks (USA) and both have confirmed their colors are vegan so if either of those are an option for you, then they’re good options. All the best!
Thank you Allison so much for getting back to me that sounds awesome I just might order it from Amazon you said I can order it? If I can’t find it in the supermarket also is it possible to make them gluten-free and if so how would I do it I know with your chocolate cake I think I added more oil and I think applesauce but I’m not sure the ratio I forgot thank you again so much!
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Hi Cindy, the strawberry extract is linked in the recipe. I’m sure you could make them gluten-free but I haven’t tested it with this recipe so can’t advise on specific amounts, you could check out our gluten-free vanilla cupcakes for a reference point.
Hi Alison, thanks again for this great recipe. I made another batch of these cupcakes for work because they are so delicious, and although my non-vegan colleagues enjoyed them, they said they could taste the olive oil in the sponge. Is there an alternative oil I could use next time that doesn’t have a strong/noticeable taste?
★★★★★
Hi Mike, sure you can use a different kind of vegetable oil, like canola if you prefer. Any vegetable oil will do. I imagine some olive oils must be stronger tasting than others because I’ve never noticed a taste from it, but I always use extra virgin olive oil, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it or not. But yes, you can definitely substitute the oil for a different one. Thanks for the awesome rating! 🙂
Thanks for the information Alison, I’ll experiment with canola and other oils and see which one turns out the best!
Thank you for such a great recipe, my cupcakes turned out very delicious! The colouring I used however faded to a dull red shade after baking; which food colouring do you recommend using?
Hi Mike, glad you liked the recipe! I have used a few brands of food color, the important thing is that it’s good for baking, some of them are only really good for coloring frostings and stuff like that, when it doesn’t need to be baked. I have used Foster Clark’s which is a UK brand and I have confirmed with them that their food colors are vegan. So if you can get that brand it definitely works well. Otherwise McCormicks is a good brand for the USA.
Thanks for the swift reply! I’ll buy some of Foster Clark’s colouring for my next baking session, thank you 😀
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I can’t find strawberry extract or essence anywhere. Should I replace with vanilla or just leave it out?
Hi Julie, I have linked in the ingredients list now to where you can get it on Amazon. You could replace it with vanilla for a vanilla/strawberry flavor blend which would be very tasty too. The extract really helps to bring out the strawberry flavor, but vanilla is an option and I think preferable to leaving it out altogether.
I couldn’t find strawberry extract either. I didn’t have time to order so I used half almond and half vanilla extract.
Hi Kelsey, thanks for sharing! Hope it came out well. 🙂
Hi
I wanted to know would unsweetened applesauce suffice in place of the flax? I always use applesauce in my cakes and cookies vs the flax and some I do use flax..
Hi there, I’m sure it could work fine as a substitute, I’m thinking likely 3 Tbsp of applesauce to replace the flax egg.
I made a bunch of these mini style for my class for Valentine’s Day. Everyone loved them 🙂 Also, for the color, I used a little bit of beet juice and it worked great!
★★★★★
Fantastic Albina! Thanks for sharing! I’ve never managed to make beet juice work, so well done on that too! 🙂
Scrumptious vegan cupcakes, moist, pretty and romantic!
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