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Vegan Mini Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes for Afternoon Tea

Little vegan lemon cupcakes are perfect for your Afternoon Tea dessert tier. The cake is not too light and not too dense, with just a sparkle of lemon. The buttercream is rich and smooth but made bright with lemon zest. Originally, I made this recipe for Vegan Month of Food 2013; running with an Afternoon Tea theme. But you can have them for any special occasion.

Mini vegan lemon raspberry cupcakes

How to Make Vegan Mini Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes

These mini cupcakes are made with a simple vanilla cake recipe. Start by whipping together vegan butter, sugar and vanilla extract. Add in soy milk, water, and powdered egg replacer. Then the best practice is to separately combine the dry ingredients. These days, I never do and they still turn out nicely! I just add sifted flour to the wet ingredients and sprinkle on the baking powder before stirring together. Unlike traditional cake batter, you do not want to mix it smooth, otherwise the mini cupcakes will turn out chewy and dense.

vegan vanilla cupcake batter

It can get fiddly trying to fill those mini cupcake tins so I use a small cookie dough scoop to help. Fill them almost to the top.

If you don’t have a mini cupcake tin, just use a regular sized one. You may have to bake for a few minutes longer; about 20 – 25 minutes.

For the buttercream, mix vegan butter along with shortening, icing sugar and the zest from one large lemon. The zest gives this buttercream a lovely lemon aroma and zing!

mixed vegan lemon buttercream

When the cupcakes are cool, you can spread or pipe the buttercream on top. I love to add fresh fruit; raspberries go especially well.

 

Printable Recipe for Vegan Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes

Yield: 12 mini cupcakes

Vegan Lemon Cupcakes for Afternoon Tea

Mini vegan lemon raspberry cupcakes

Enjoy these light and fluffy cupcakes with zingy lemon butter cream for your Vegan Afternoon Tea or any special occasion.

Ingredients

For Cake

  • 1/2 cup Earth Balance Buttery Spread/Stick or other vegan butter substitute
  • 3/4 cup organic granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose white flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3 teaspoons of egg replacer (such Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer) with 3 tablespoons of water
  • 1 cup of soy milk

For Vegan Lemon Buttercream

  • 4 tablespoons Earth Balance (or your favourite butter alternative)
  • 2 tablespoons All-vegetable shortening
  • 1 1/2 cup icing sugar
  • zest from one large lemon

Optional

  • 12 fresh raspberries

Instructions

For Cake:

  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a mini cupcake tin with parchment liners.
  2. In a mixing bowl, cream the Earth Balance (or other vegan butter alternative), sugar, and vanilla extract until light and fluffy. If you have a mixture, this will take a couple minutes. If all you have is a fork and elbow grease (like me) it might take five minutes.
  3. In another bowl, mix the egg replacer, water, and soy milk until it's thoroughly combined and frothy. Add this to the butter mixture and whisk together well.
  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Then add this to your wet ingredients, a little at a time, until it is combined. Mix this together until smooth.
  5. Fill each liner 3/4 full. Place the tin in middle of the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until you can stick a toothpick in the middle of the largest cupcake and it comes out clean. Let cool before adding buttercream

For Buttercream:

  1. Combine all the ingredients into a mixing bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat everything together until light and fluffy. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes. Top with fresh raspberries or other fruit if you like.

Did you make this recipe?

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Showing 2 comments
  • Maggie Muggins
    Reply

    How did you like that recipe? I’ve been meaning to try it, is it better then VCTOTW?
    Mmm, I love all things lemon, they turned out super cute too.

    • vmaryv
      Reply

      I haven’t actually had the VCTOTW one. This cupcake really reminds me of the ones you can get from Community Natural Foods. They are alright but not my holy grail.

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