Paleo Vanilla Cupcakes With Pink Vanilla Frosting

These paleo vanilla cupcakes are the perfect treat! Topped with pink coconut cream frosting and filled with chocolate, they’re light and deliciously sweet!

These paleo vanilla cupcakes with a pink vanilla coconut cream frosting came just in time for Valentine’s Day! These cupcakes are deliciously sweet yet somehow extraordinarily refreshing, filled with a decadent chocolate cream, and topped with a vanilla frosting dyed pink from beet powder! And the kicker- these paleo vanilla cupcakes are made with none other than my favorite, Japanese sweet potato!

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After sharing my recipe for these delicious paleo chocolate cupcakes, I got so many requests for a vanilla version, that I thought it would be best to share these paleo vanilla cupcakes right around Valentine’s Day! If you aren’t making these cupcakes around Valentine’s Day, feel free to omit the beet powder (which gives the vanilla coconut frosting an all-natural pink tint!)!

So of course, I’m going to make these cupcakes with sweet potato. I mean, it’s only in traditional Banana Diaries fashion 😉 The best part is that I got these approved by complete strangers! Well, okay so they weren’t total strangers- they were friends of friends that we met at brunch.

They had no idea what I did, only that I brought over these seemingly standard paleo vanilla cupcakes. They took one bite and were sold! In fact, they immediately asked me for the recipe, which I happily gave them and pointed them over to a few more recipes they may like 😉

Now it’s official. People are on board with my sweet potato craze haha! But let’s get into the details because you’re here because you’re already intrigued and just want to get to making these bad boys!

So these paleo vanilla cupcakes are actually filled with chocolate avocado cream! I actually used the same recipe that I used to make the frosting for the paleo chocolate cupcakes (which were filled with nut butter), and it worked out perfectly. It’s the perfect balance of chocolate and vanilla, with a refreshing note of coconut from the flour and frosting.

I then topped the cupcakes with a paleo vanilla frosting made from coconut cream and dyed pink from beet powder! You could obviously use a standard red dye that you get at a grocery store- I never want people to think that they have to go out and buy these super expensive “specialty” ingredients if they don’t have them on hand. But I will say, the beet powder adds some nice recovery benefits!

Did you know that beets are actually great for muscle recovery? Back in the day when I ran cross-country, I made a beet smoothie every other day to help speed up the healing of the muscle tears from our workouts! Pretty neat, huh? A dessert with benefits!

Now I also want to mention that these cupcakes are completely nut-free too. So they’re pretty allergy friendly (unless you have an allergy to coconut- in which case, you can sub in your standard go-tos!). I also give an option to make these vegan because I got such good feedback from my paleo vegan baked vanilla cake donuts!

So let’s just dive into the ingredients!

What’s in these vanilla cupcakes?

Well, we already know the famous Japanese sweet potato is a key player. For these paleo vanilla cupcakes, you’ll need to bake the sweet potatoes before hand and remove the skin!

Then we have coconut flour and coconut milk. Gotta love that coconut flavor.

I also used eggs, but feel free to swap in a vegan egg here made of chia or flax! Personally, I love the chia eggs, but I know flax is more popular!

I also added a touch of maple syrup and of course vanilla extract for the vanilla flavor 😉

Then of course we have the frosting and the filling: for the frosting, I used coconut cream, beet powder, vanilla (again!), and maple syrup! Then the filling consisted of avocado, cacao, and maple syrup 🙂 Easy, right?

All you need to do then is place the ingredients for the paleo vanilla cupcakes into the food processor (or blender if you don’t have a food processor!) and blend! Same goes for the filling 🙂 I’m a big fan of not having to do too much work when I make baked goods haha! Plus, I trust that the machine will do a better job mixing it anyways!

For the frosting, I used a small hand mixer– again, big on using the machines these days haha! Of course, you can always mix the batter yourself, but I do recommend using a hand mixer for the frosting to get the right consistency! You want the frosting to hold together when you pipe, so that’s key.

I was actually shocked how much people really loved these. Even Jared, who only goes for thirds of my chocolate desserts, went for not one, not two, but FOUR cupcakes! Over the span of a few hours, so don’t worry haha! But still, these paleo vanilla cupcakes are surprisingly refreshing and don’t give you a sugar high! Just a really happy belly high 😉 Haha!

Now these paleo vanilla cupcakes definitely are not just for Valentine’s Day. You could switch up the color of the frosting! Make it blue if you were doing a baby reveal, red and/or green for Christmas, yellow and/or orange for the summer, or just about any occasion! I’m definitely putting in a request to make these for my 25 birthday (ugh, it’s this year- I’m getting so old!)…do we think Jared can handle making these? Haha!

I would love to hear what you think of these cupcakes! You’re more than welcome to join the Banana Fam Facebook group and share your recreations, tag me on Instagram, or upload your photo to Pinterest! And if you’re a cupcake-aholic, like I’m quickly becoming, let me know what flavors you’d like to see in the future by commenting below 🙂 Happy Baking!

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