Christina The perfect treat/dessert for your family during Christmas time, so beautiful and extremely delicious! Moist and soft red velvet cupcakes with a homemade vegan cream cheese frosting that is insanely yummy. And that’s not all! They have a fun surprise inside, as the Christmas trees hide delicious chocolate-covered walnut pieces. Yum! Our Vegan Christmas Tree Cupcakes are so much fun to make and super beautiful.
They are the perfect snack/dessert for your family during Christmas time. This recipe can also be found in our cookbook and e-cookbook. Click here to learn more.
You must give them a try, as they are not difficult to make either. You’re going to love them!
Are you maybe wondering what red velvet cake is exactly? Red velvet contains cacao powder in it, but that does not make it a chocolate cake.
In red velvet cake, there is very little cacao powder used, in comparison to chocolate cake. The cacao powder generally serves to deepen the colour. Its reaction with the acid of the vinegar reveals the red anthocyanin, which tints it red and also makes the cake extra light and fluffy.
Red velvet cake is traditionally paired with cream cheese frosting and together, they produce the unique and iconic flavour of red velvet cake.
Our vegan version tastes just as good as the non-vegan one, if not better because being dairy-free will ensure that you don’t feel sick afterwards!
If you enjoyed our Vegan Christmas Tree Cupcakes, check out our Vegan Gingerbread Cookies (Swedish Style). You’ll love them!
And… in case you missed it, we are so excited to announce that we have published our very first cookbook ALL PLANTS: The Food You Love, The Vegan Way, which includes over 150 satisfying recipes to feed all the members of your household (including your dogs!). It’s available internationally as a hardcover on Book Depository (with free delivery worldwide), Walmart, and in many other bookstores! Yay! Click here to learn more. You can also purchase it as a downloadable e-book (pdf) in our Store (currently ON SALE!), and our Etsy Shop (also on sale there!).
The Best Red Velvet Vegan Christmas Tree Cupcakes
Enjoy friends! If you make this recipe, please snap a photo and tag @veganvvocals and #veganvvocals on Instagram! We’d also love it if you would leave a comment below, and give the recipe a rating! Thanks so much!
Ingredients
VEGAN RED VELVET CUPCAKES
- 1/2 cup oat milk
- 1/2 tbsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- 1/2 cup raw sugar
- 2 tbsp solid coconut oil, cold pressed
- 110 g all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp raw cacao powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 1/2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
- 2 tbsp red food colouring
FROSTING
Vegan Cream Cheese
- 1 1/2 cups cashews, soaked overnight
- 2 tbsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- 3 strips lemon zest
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 100 ml canned full-fat coconut milk
Icing
- 200 g unsalted vegan butter block, at room temperature
- 220 g icing sugar
- 3 tbsp green food colouring
6 ICE CREAM CONES
FILLING
- 1/3 cup walnut pieces
- 150 g vegan dark chocolate or any vegan chocolate of your preference, melted
Icing sugar to sprinkle on top
Instructions
RED VELVET CUPCAKES
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/356ºF.
- In a small bowl, combine lemon juice and oat milk, and set aside for 10 minutes.
- In a large bowl, beat the sugar and solid coconut oil, using an electric mixer with beaters. Stir in flour, cacao powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, vanilla extract, apple cider vinegar and applesauce, and beat again until a dough has formed.
- Stir in red food colouring, and beat again until the desired colour has been reached.
- Line a 6-cup cupcake pan with 6 cupcake liners. Fill them about two-thirds full with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cupcake comes out dry with a few crumbs clinging to it.
- Let the cupcakes cool completely before adding the frosting.
FROSTING
- Make sure you soaked the cashews overnight, and if you forgot, emergency-boil them for 15 minutes.
- In a high-speed blender, combine cashews, lemon juice, lemon zest strips, vanilla extract, salt, and coconut milk, and blend until smooth. This is the vegan cream cheese.
- Make sure the vegan butter is at room temperature.
- In a large bowl, combine the vegan butter and icing sugar, and beat with an electric mixer with beaters. Stir in the vegan cream cheese you just made in the high-speed blender, and beat everything together. If there are lumps, use an immersion blender to blend it all together until smooth. Refrigerate this bowl for 1-2 hours (the more time you refrigerate it, the better). Don't add the green food colouring yet!
- Spoon some of the frosting into a piping bag and pipe it on top of the cupcakes to create a white base for the tree. Cover the cupcakes in white frosting to make it look like snow.
- Once you have done this on all the cupcakes, proceed to add the green food colouring to the rest of the frosting mix, and using the electric mixer with beaters, beat again until smooth.
- Place the cupcakes in the fridge in the meantime.
FILLING
- Using a double boiler, melt the vegan chocolate. Once melted, combine it with the walnut pieces. Place them on a parchment paper, separated in six parts, and let cool for half an hour.
CHRISTMAS TREES CREATION
- Use a spatula to apply a thin layer of green frosting to the surface of the ice cream cones. This will help the dollops you apply stick to the cone better as well as making the trees completely green.
- Now it’s time to fill each cone with the chocolate covered walnuts, being very careful. Place the cones on top of each cupcake, pressing down so it gets stuck to the white “snow” part.
- Spoon the green frosting into a piping bag with a small star nozzle and pipe star-shaped dollops onto the surface of the cone beginning at the bottom and working to the top.
- Sprinkle your desired amount of icing sugar on top, to create the snow effect.
- Now they are ready to be served and photographed!
- Store in the refrigerator.
- Enjoy, they are delicious!
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I´m dying to make these cupcakes again this Christmas. I made them with the kids last year and they were so much fun and absolutely delicious! Also SOOO BEAUTIFUL! Everyone loved them, they were finished the 1st day!
Hi Chantal,
Thank you so much for your lovely comment! It makes us so happy you and your family liked our Vegan Christmas Tree Cupcakes 🙂 We love them too and make them every Christmas! You’re absolutely right, they are so much fun to make and so yummy, right?
I made these cupcakes last year and making them again today! My entire family loves making and eating them! Thank you so much for sharing this amazing recipe!
Hi Liza,
We are so so happy to hear that! I hope you and your family enjoy the cupcakes this year too! We are also making them again yay!
These Christmas tree cupcakes are the cutest little things! They are so delicious too! Everyone loves them, thank you so much! Perfect for Christmas and vegan yay!
These are so yummy and beautiful. The children love them and so do I. Have been making them now for 2 years. Best dessert on Christmas’eve. Thank you!
This is our favorite Christmas recipe. We make it every single year since we found it. These cupcakes aren’t just the prettiest, but they are also DELICIOUS! They also last for days in the fridge in perfect condition.