Vegan Peanut Butter Frosting on Milk Chocolate Cupcakes

This vegan peanut butter frosting is easy to make, is high in protein and is delicious. Use sunflower seed butter to make the frosting nut-free. Piped here with vanilla and chocolate frosting in a tri-color swirl on my recipe for vegan milk chocolate cupcakes. You are welcome!

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Vegan Peanut Butter Frosting on Milk Chocolate Cupcakes

Vegan peanut butter frosting is the bomb. Combine it with chocolate and vanilla frosting using a tri-flavored icing tip and you have a beautiful sight – a fun spiral of frosting.

The peanut butter frosting is wonderful because it is vegan, low in sugar than most frostings, and can be incredibly nutritious if you use a raw and unsweetened peanut butter brand.

And want to make it nut-free? Use sunflower seed butter. The nutrition in sunflower seeds is quite high. Read this study on sunflower seed nutrition here.

How Healthy is Peanut Butter?

Well, it depends on the brand you use. If you stick to unsweetened brands that insert few additives, the nut butter can be quite high in protein but missing an essential amino acid so it shouldn’t be relied upon as a main source of protein. Still, it is high in protein and low in carbs, perfect for those on a low carb diet.

And it is a huge energy booster. Imagine a cupcake as a healthy energy booster! Here is a useful assessment of how healthy peanut butter really is.

Prefer to make the icing nut-free? Use sunflower seed butter. It is also high in nutrition, including an inflammation fighter, and high in vitamin E, a good support of skin.

Sunflower seeds are also high in selenium, which serves as an antioxidant, binding to free radicals, and getting rid of them before they cause disease. Read more about the importance of sunflower-seed-based selenium here.

Can I Use Other Nut Butters?

Of course! Cashew butter, almond butter, all are great options to use as a more nutritional frosting.

You can either buy them. Here is my link to my Amazon store where you can find lots of nut butters as well as other useful ingredients and equipment.

Or you can make your own nut butters. Here is my homemade nut butter recipe here.

And once you choose your nut butter and your two favorite chocolate and vanilla frostings, you’ll need a way to tri-color pipe it! Here is my favorite 3-color piping bag system.

And if you have the three frostings and coupler ready, you’ll need a cupcake to pipe it all on to. Somehow that sentence has the rhythm of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..” Who knows that book?

I have a side hobby of collecting children’s picture books. One day I’ll take a video of my bookcase and show you all!

Moving right along, below you’ll also find my vegan recipe to a milk chocolate cupcake recipe.

It basically tastes the same as normal chocolate cupcake but comes out lighter color. The only milk of course is plant milk.

I hope you undertake this fun project! And one little tip: piping nut butter takes arm strength. So be forewarned!

Here are a few other peanut butter dessert recipes on my blog:

Homemade Nut Butter Recipe
Healthy Homemade Snickers Cups
Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie
Chocolate Peanut Butter No Churn Ice Cream

And here a few Asian savory recipes that use peanut butter:

Asian Lettuce Wraps with Peanut Sauce
Thai Spring Rolls with Spicy Peanut Sauce

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Vegan Peanut Butter Frosting on Milk Chocolate Cupcakes

This vegan peanut butter frosting is easy to make, is high in protein and is delicious. Use sunflower seed butter to make the frosting nut-free. Piped here with vanilla and chocolate frosting in a tri-color swirl on my recipe for vegan milk chocolate cupcakes. You are welcome!

5 from 2 votes

Print Rate

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free

Keyword: milk chocolate cupcakes, nut butter frosting, sunflower seed butter, tri-color frosting, vegan cupcakes, vegan frosting

Does it keep?: 1-week refrigerated

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Servings: 10

Calories: 168kcal

Author: Dee Dine

Ingredients

Peanut Butter Frosting

• 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth, organic, unsweetened and healthy. I use Once, 365 brands)
• 3 tbsp milk (A creamy plant milk is best, such as oat or hemp)

Vanilla Icing

• 1 1/2 cups vegan powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup vegan butter
• 4-6 tbsp of almond milk
• 1 tsp vanilla paste

Chocolate Icing

• 1/2 unsweetened dark chocolate bar 100% cacao
• 1 1/2 cups vegan powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup vegan butter
• 6-8 tbsp of almond milk
• 1 tsp vanilla paste

Useful Equipment

• Wilton's 3-flavor frosting coupler

Cupcakes - wet ingredients

• 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flax + 6 tbsp water)
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 3/4 tsp ACV
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce

Cupcakes - dry ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup 1 to 1 gluten-free baking flour
• pinch of salt

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Make the Milk Chocolate Cupcakes

• Add the baking soda to the milk that has the ACV in it.
• Pour the dry ingredients into a large bowl and sift with a wisk, breaking up clumps of cacao powder if any.
• Add the liquid ingredients to the dry, including the milk you just prepared.

  Blend with a hand-mixer until just blended.
• Spoon into cupcake liners, filling just under the edge of the liners

  Bake for 29 minutes or until a test comes out clean.
• Let cool for a few minutes or less.

  When you can, remove each cup by gripping edges of the paper liners or the sides of the cupcake and set on a cooling rack.

  Let them completely cool before preparing frosting.

Make the Peanut Butter Frosting

• Stir the peanut butter and milk in a bowl with a spoon or wisk. Once smooth, it is ready to add to the frosting bag.

Make the Chocolate and Vanilla Frostings

• If you plan on making my milk chocolate cupcake recipe, bake the cupcakes first and then make the frostings.

  For each frosting - chocolate and vanilla - follow this procedure.
• First, for each recipe, pour the sugar and vanilla into a medium baking bowl.
• Melt the butter (and chocolate in the case of the chocolate frosting), in a pot that is sitting in another pot of boiling water. Do not let water touch the chocolate.
• Once the mixture of butter (and chocolate) is melted, pour onto the sugar, add milk, and hand-mix until you have a smooth texture to both your frostings. Add more or less milk per flavor to make your texture pipable.

  You can refrigerate frosting for 3 days in a covered container. If you want to make them earlier on baking day, simple cover the finished frosting bowl with a soaking wet paper towel to keep the frosting from hardening. Depending on how long it is left, you might have to re-hand mix and add a bit more milk.

Tri-flavor Frost Cupcakes

• Fill your tri-flavor frosting bag with the three frostings - vanilla, chocolate and peanut butter - and pipe swirls onto your cupcakes.

Notes

The serving size and nutritional value is for cupcakes only

Nutrition

Calories: 168kcal | Carbohydrates: 25g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 7g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 19mg | Potassium: 79mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 9g | Vitamin A: 5IU | Vitamin C: 0.2mg | Calcium: 35mg | Iron: 1.1mg

Dee Dine

Dee Dine is founder of Green Smoothie Gourmet, a plant based recipe blog, and author of the recent cookbook, Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients . On this blog you’ll find incredibly easy recipes with hidden veggies for anyone wanting to eat healthier, regardless of diet. Dee has graduate degrees in sciences and  journalism. More about Dee Dine here.