Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Vanilla Cupcakes

These vanilla cupcakes are moist, light, gluten-free AND dairy-free. The recipe is super simple and can be mixed up in one bowl for easy clean up!

These cupcakes would be perfect with my vegan chocolate frosting, strawberry buttercream frosting, vanilla buttercream frosting or my fav, easy chocolate buttercream frosting.

Ingredients

I prefer to mix up my own gluten-free flour blend. I find that most store-bought blends are quite starchy and I don’t like the texture they create in cakes and cupcakes as much. My blend also has much better flavor than your average rice flour blend. The best part is that DIY flour blends are a HUGE cost saver. Here is the mix that I prefer:

• 1 cup sweet white sorghum flour
• 1/2 c brown rice flour
• 1/2 c millet flour
• 2/3 c potato starch
• 1/3 c tapioca starch

For more info on mixing up your own flour blend, check out my post Gluten-Free Flour Blends.

If you prefer a store bought blend, I like King Arthur Flour’s All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour. This is their blend without binders (xanthan gum, guar gum). Omit the xanthan gum in the recipe if your flour blend already contains it or other binders like inulin and guar gum.

Vanilla – Seems so simple but there are options. I prefer to get vanilla flavor into my cupcakes without the alcohol in extracts. Cook’s Vanilla Powder is the perfect way to do this. It’s slightly sweetened, pale and bursting with vanilla flavor. Vanilla bean pastes still have some alcohol in them, but I do like the flavor.

Milk – I am mostly dairy-free (other than butter) so I use a dairy-free milk substitute. Any unsweetened one will work in the recipe. Dairy is very helpful in getting gluten-free cakes to brown, so expect yours to be more pale if you you use a sub.

Xanthan gum is a binder used in most gluten-free baked goods. If your flour blend has it, just leave out the 1/2 tsp called for in the recipe.

Tools

My absolute favorite tool for cupcake and muffin making is this Wilton Perfect Fill Batter Tip. It’s a tip that fits into a piping bag and allows you to fill paper liners with out the messy drips and glops of batter all over the pan. It has a silicone tip that opens and closes with pressure on the piping bag. I NEVER make cupcakes or muffins without it. Unless of course there are blueberries or something else that would clog it up – it must be a smooth batter like this cupcake batter.

Cupcake liners are a pretty basic item but I love a natural cupcake liner without chemicals.