Delicious rich and bubbly champagne cupcakes that are secretly vegan and dairy free! These easy one bowl cupcakes make for the best New Year’s Eve dessert!

Secretly Vegan Champagne Cupcakes (New Year's Eve Cupcakes)

This recipe is in collaboration with Flora Plant Butter. Thank you for supporting the brands that make The Banana Diaries possible!

If you’ve never tried a champagne cupcake before, then you’re in for a treat.

These secretly vegan and boozy cupcakes are made light and fluffy yet incredibly full of flavor with champagne, vanilla, and vegan butter.

I made these for our holiday celebrations, and even my boyfriend’s 94 year old grandma loved them. Her exact words? “These taste like normal! How’d you do it?!”

Normal meaning not vegan ha! She’s hysterical!

You’ll absolutely love these vegan champagne cupcakes. They’re perfect for New Year’s Eve, weddings, birthdays, college graduations, and more! Plus they’re made in just one bowl and you don’t even have to reduce the champagne! Bake on!

Secretly Vegan Champagne Cupcakes (New Year's Eve Cupcakes)
champagne being poured with cupcake

Do champagne cupcakes still contain alcohol once baked?

Even though many believe that alcohol completely cooks out when baked or cook, the truth is that it might actually take alcohol over 3 hours to fully cook or bake out of a recipe.

This means that these champagne cupcakes do indeed still contain some alcohol in them once baked (since we’re only baking them for approximately 25 minutes!).

Unfortunately, it’s best to bake a separate batch of perhaps vanilla cupcakes or chocolate cupcakes for kids to enjoy as their New Year’s Eve cupcakes rather than indulge in these boozy ones!

vegan prosecco cupcakes

Personally, I wouldn’t mind having more cupcakes- the more New Year’s Eve desserts the sweeter the year, right? 😉

Do I need to reduce the champagne before baking these vegan cupcakes?

Nope!

This champagne cupcake recipe is so incredibly easy. You’ll just use the champagne directly in the batter.

If you don’t have champagne, you can also swap in Prosecco and yield the same results!

vegan cupcakes on cooling rack

How to make champagne cupcakes

The full directions and ingredient measurements for these vegan champagne cupcakes are found down below in the recipe card.

However, let’s go over what you’ll need in terms of ingredients and a few pointer tips as well.

For these champagne cupcakes, you’ll need:

  • Flour: you can use gluten-free 1:1 baking flour or regular all-purpose flour
  • Sugar: to keep these cupcakes refined sugar free, you can swap in coconut sugar. Just note that the cupcakes will be tanner in color!
  • Leavening agents
  • Champagne: as mentioned above, you can also use Prosecco if you’d prefer 🙂
  • Flora Plant Butter: this is my new favorite vegan butter, as it tastes just like the real deal yet is entirely dairy free, vegan, and nut free. A wonderful nut-free option for those with allergies!
  • Applesauce: I like to use unsweetened applesauce here, as these cupcakes are already very sweet!
  • Vanilla extract: you can also use vanilla paste, which gives these beautiful specks throughout the cupcakes

You can make these cupcakes in just one bowl with a hand mixer, or you can use a stand mixer. It’s up to you!

To make these cupcakes, you’ll first:

  1. Whisk together the dry ingredients.
  2. Add in the wet ingredients and fold together (or mix together!) until there are no more dry streaks in the batter.
  3. Divide the batter into a cupcake tin and bake!
dry ingredients
wet ingredients added to dry
batter mixed
batter in cupcake tin

Once the cupcakes are fully baked, you’ll allow them to cool in the cupcake tin for a few minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to fully cool before frosting.

Vegan Hazelnut Buttercream

This might be my favorite part of the cupcake: the vegan hazelnut buttercream. It pairs so well with the rich and bubbly yet light texture of these vegan boozy cupcakes.

To make the hazelnut buttercream, you’ll simply cream together more Flora Plant Butter (I prefer unsalted here!) along with ground hazelnuts and powdered sugar (more on that in the recipe card).

If you’d like to keep this recipe entirely refined sugar free, you can also use coconut sugar. Just keep in mind that the color of the buttercream will be more tan in color, which will actually be quite beautiful!

hazelnut vegan butter cream

Simply pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes and decorate however you’d like. I used vegan fondant here along with some snowflake fondant cutters and vegan dragees.

You can also use a different flavored dairy free buttercream if you’d like as well, such as vanilla or vegan white chocolate.

These secretly vegan champagne cupcakes make for the perfect New Year’s Eve dessert! Absolutely no one will know that they’re vegan (not even a 94 year old grandma 😉 )!

bitten vegan champagne cupcake

I hope that you absolutely love these champagne cupcakes as much as I do! If you make them, let me know down below in the comments section, as well as giving them a rating so that others may find them.

As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there!

Happy vegan cupcake baking!

More vegan New Year’s Eve desserts you’ll love:

Vegan White Chocolate Cake

Easy Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Vegan Ginger Cake

Vegan White Chocolate Cupcakes

Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!

Secretly Vegan Champagne Cupcakes (New Year's Eve Cupcakes)
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Secretly Vegan Champagne Cupcakes (New Year's Eve Cupcakes)

Incredibly Vegan Champagne Cupcakes (New Year’s Eve Cupcakes!)

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Description

Delicious rich and bubbly champagne cupcakes that are secretly vegan and dairy free! These easy one bowl cupcakes make for the best New Year’s Eve dessert!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 1/2 cups cake flour or sifted gluten-free 1-to-1 baking flour (if doing gluten-free, add in 1 tsp arrowroot powder) 
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar or coconut sugar (see Notes) 
  • 1/2 tablespoon baking powder 
  • 1 1/8 teaspoons baking soda 
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt 
  • 1/2 cup champagne, room temperature 
  • 1/4 cup Flora Plant Butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce, room temperature 
  • 3/4 tablespoon pure vanilla extract 

Vegan Hazelnut Buttercream

  • 1 3/4 cups Flora Plant Butter, room temerpature
  • 1/2 cup ground hazelnuts
  • 4–5 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3–4 tbsp dairy free milk

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F and line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners. 
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.
  3. Add in the champagne, applesauce, Flora Plant Butter, and vanilla extract, and use a rubber spatula to mix until it’s a consistent batter without any streaks of dry ingredients.
  4. Scoop the batter into the cupcake tin, filling each cupcake liner about 1/2 of the way full.
  5. Bake for 22-24 minutes, or until the tops of the cupcakes are lightly golden and the toothpick comes out clean.
  6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
  7. When ready to frost, make the hazelnut buttercream. Cream the Flora Plant Butter with a hand mixer or stand mixer. Then add in the ground hazelnuts and vanilla extract. Cream again until everything is smooth. Add in the powdered sugar in 1 cup increments, using the hand mixer to mix everything together until fluffy and smooth. Use the dairy free milk here to achieve a smooth consistency in 1 tablespoon increments.
  8. Spoon the frosting into a piping bag with piping tip inserted. Frost each cupcake and enjoy!