These gluten-free chocolate cupcakes are a perfect alternative for anyone baking around allergies. They are dairy free too, and they taste like a proper chocolate cupcake rather than a compromise. Gluten-free chocolate cupcakes are a one bowl, oil based chocolate cupcake made with a blend of gluten-free flours, coconut or almond milk, and a spoonful of vinegar that gives them their lift.
Last week I had a friend who wanted gluten-free chocolate cupcakes. I like to make them with a blend of gluten-free flours and then top them off with dairy-free chocolate ganache or dairy-free vanilla frosting. I could have made her my gluten-free magic bars, but I decided on cupcakes.
There are lots of flours on the market, but I prefer to make mine with a blend of flours. I have tried boxed cupcakes from the grocery store, but I do not really like the texture. So I tried several blends and several brands and came up with this homemade blend. If you keep a gluten-free kitchen, my list of pantry staples is where I would start.
Quick Look
- 🕒 Prep Time: 20 minutes
- 🌡️ Cook Time: 20 minutes
- ⏳ Total Time: 40 minutes
- 🍽️ Serving: 18 cupcakes
- ⚡ Calories: 128kcal per cupcake, before frosting
- 🌶️ Flavor Profile: Deep unsweetened cocoa, a soft moist crumb, and just enough vanilla to round it out
- ✋ Difficulty: Easy, one bowl of dry and one bowl of wet, like my other cupcake recipes
Quick Answer
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a cupcake pan with liners. Sift the gluten-free flour blend, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl. In a stand mixer, combine the coconut or almond milk, warm water, oil, vinegar and vanilla, then add the sifted dry ingredients and beat for one minute. Fill the liners a little fuller than you would for regular cupcakes and bake for 20 minutes. Take them out of the pan right away and let them cool completely before frosting.
Jump to:
- Quick Look
- Quick Answer
- Why This Recipe Works
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Key Ingredients
- Variations & Substitutions
- How to Make Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes
- Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Serving Ideas & Suggestions
- Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcake FAQs
- Other Recommended Gluten-Free Recipes
- Gluten Free Dairy Free Chocolate Cupcakes
Why This Recipe Works
Click to see the technique science
- The vinegar is the lift. Gluten-free batters have no gluten network to trap air, so the vinegar reacting with the baking soda does that job. That is why the batter goes into the oven right after it is mixed.
- A blend of flours beats a single flour. One gluten-free flour on its own tends to bake gritty or gummy. A blend balances the starches and the whole grain flours, which is why I make my own.
- Oil keeps them moist longer than butter. Oil stays liquid at room temperature, so the crumb reads as soft rather than dry on day two.
- Sifting matters more here than in a regular cupcake. Gluten-free flours and cocoa both clump. Sifting is what keeps you from finding a pocket of dry cocoa in a finished cupcake.
- Warm water blooms the cocoa. Warm liquid pulls more flavor out of unsweetened cocoa powder, which is where the chocolate depth comes from with no melted chocolate in the recipe.
- Beating for one minute is enough. There is no gluten to overdevelop, but over beating knocks out the air the vinegar just created.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Gluten free and dairy free. One recipe covers both, so nobody at the table gets handed a lesser dessert.
- No special equipment. A sifter, a stand mixer or a hand mixer, and a cupcake pan.
- They taste like chocolate cupcakes. Unsweetened cocoa and warm water do the work, so there is no aftertaste from a boxed mix.
- They take frosting beautifully. Top them with dairy-free chocolate ganache or dairy-free vanilla buttercream and nobody guesses.
- Small enough to serve at tea. They sit happily on a tiered tray next to my tea party cupcakes.
- Forty minutes start to finish. Faster than my gluten-free magic bars when someone needs a dessert tonight.
Key Ingredients
Eleven pantry ingredients, and the flour blend is the one worth getting right. Quantities are in the recipe card below.
- Gluten-Free Flour. I use my own gluten-free flour blend rather than a single flour. Store bought all purpose gluten-free blends work, but the texture is why I mix my own.
- Cocoa Powder. Unsweetened, not Dutch process and not hot cocoa mix. This is the entire chocolate flavor of the cupcake.
- White Granulated Cane Sugar. Sugar keeps a gluten-free crumb tender as well as sweet, so do not cut it back.
- Baking Powder and Baking Soda. Both. The soda is there to react with the vinegar, the powder carries the rest of the rise.
- Coconut Milk or Almond Milk. Unsweetened. Either one keeps the recipe dairy free, and coconut milk gives a slightly richer crumb.
- Warm Water. Warm, not hot. It blooms the cocoa powder as the batter comes together.
- Vegetable Oil. Any neutral oil. This is what keeps them moist for more than a day.
- White Vinegar. One tablespoon, and it is not optional. You will not taste it in the baked cupcake.
- Vanilla Extract and Sea Salt. The two ingredients that stop a chocolate cupcake tasting flat.
See the recipe card below for exact quantities and full instructions.
Variations & Substitutions
The base is plain on purpose, which makes it easy to send in a different direction.
- Top with chocolate ganache. My dairy-free chocolate ganache is three ingredients and sets to a soft shine.
- Top with vanilla frosting. The dairy-free buttercream is the version I make most often for birthdays.
- Use dairy if you can. If gluten is the only issue at your table, regular milk and my classic chocolate ganache both work in place of the dairy-free versions.
- Make them banana chocolate. If you want something closer to a snack cake, my vegan banana chocolate cupcakes use the same idea with mashed banana.
- Add a flavored icing. Lavender icing turns them into something closer to my Earl Grey cupcakes for an afternoon tea table.
- Make them minis. Fill mini liners two thirds full and start checking at 11 minutes.
How to Make Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line 12 to 14 cups of a cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
- In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour blend, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
- In a stand mixer, combine the coconut milk, water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Add the sifted dry ingredients and beat for one minute.
- Distribute the batter evenly into the liners, filling them a little fuller than you would regular cupcakes. Bake for 20 minutes, then test for doneness.
- Remove from the oven, carefully lift the cupcakes out of the pan right away, and let them cool completely before frosting.
Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Fill them a little fuller than you would regular cupcakes. Gluten-free batter does not climb the liner the same way.
- Take them out of the pan right away. Left in a hot pan they keep steaming, and that condensation is what makes them stick to the wrapper.
- Let them cool completely before storing. Warm cupcakes in an airtight container create their own puddle.
- They do not last as long as regular cupcakes. Plan on serving them the day you bake them, or the next morning at the latest.
- Test at 18 minutes. Ovens vary, and a gluten-free cupcake goes from moist to dry faster than a wheat one.
- Frost only once they are cold. My frosting notes cover getting a clean swirl without a piping bag.
Serving Ideas & Suggestions
Serve them frosted on a cake stand with a pot of tea. They belong on an afternoon tea table, at a birthday alongside my vanilla birthday cupcakes so there is an option for everyone, and on a dessert table with my easy chocolate brownies for the guests who are not avoiding gluten.
If you are feeding a gluten-free crowd for a whole afternoon, my gluten-free monster cookies, S’mores brownie pie, peanut butter kiss cookies and pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes all come from the same flour blend. For a grown up spread, the adult tea party ideas post has the rest of the menu, and there are more flavors in my 25 gourmet cupcake recipes.
Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcake FAQs
They hold more moisture than regular cupcakes, and if they sit in the hot pan the condensation collects between the cupcake and the liner. Take them out of the pan as soon as they come out of the oven and let them cool completely, and they peel much more cleanly.
A blend, not a single flour. I use my own gluten-free flour blend because the boxed mixes I tried had a texture I did not like. Any all purpose gluten-free blend that already contains a starch and a binder will work in this recipe.
No. The tablespoon of white vinegar reacts with the baking soda and gives the batter its rise, and the flavor bakes off completely. Leaving it out gives you flat, dense cupcakes.
Yes. The batter uses unsweetened coconut milk or almond milk and vegetable oil, with no butter or dairy milk. Keep them dairy free by frosting with the dairy-free chocolate ganache or the dairy-free buttercream.
Not as long as regular cupcakes. They are best the day they are baked and still good the next day if you let them cool completely and then store them in an airtight container. After that the crumb starts to dry out.
Yes, unfrosted. Cool them completely, wrap them individually, and freeze for up to two months. Thaw at room temperature and frost once they are fully thawed.
Gluten Free Dairy Free Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups gluten-free flour
- 1 cups white granulated cane sugar
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder unsweetened
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk or almond milk
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoons white vinegar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line 12 – 14 cupcake with cupcake liners.
- In large mixing bowl sift flour blend, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In Stand mixer combine coconut milk, water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Add in the sifted dry ingredients. and beat for 1 minute.
- Evenly distribute into cupcake liners. Bake for 20 minutes. Test for doneness.
- Remove from oven and carefully take out of cupcake pans and let cool.
Christina says
These look totally scrumptious! Thanks so much for sharing this recipe!
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Candi says
Youre welcome. I am glad you stopped by for a visit.
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Jo Linsdell says
Looks yummy! I’ve been struggling with finding the right balance of flours for gluten free cakes so this is very helpful. I’ll also try your suggestion of letting them cool completely before putting them in the container as I’ve been having the same issues.
Bree says
Those look yummy!
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Barb @ ALB says
Ah, I have a trick I can share with you about the wrappers! A friend of mine discovered that aluminum wrappers don't stick to gluten-free cupcakes and muffins like the paper wrappers do.
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Theresa says
Seriously look yummy! Pinning to my gluten free board. Theresa @DearCreatives
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Michelle says
Beautiful! I've got gluten free cupcakes on my food prep list this Sunday. Yours turned out beautifully!
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Libby's Library says
May I have on now, please? Or maybe two?
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Mrs. AOK says
Yum! Thanks for sharing this recipe 🙂
Pinned for future reference.
XOXO
Ashley Mullen says
I wish my frosted cupcakes looked that good! Thank you for linking up to Creative K Kids’ Tasty Tuesdays Linky Party. I have pinned your post to the Tasty Tuesdays Pinterest Board.
Mandee Pogue says
These look absolutely divine Candi! I can’t wait to give them a try!