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Healthy Hostess Cupcakes

Healthy Hostess Cupcakes!

healthy hostess cupcake

Hostess cupcakes iced with Hot Chocolate Butter.

vegan hostess cupcake

Along with yesterday’s Healthy Cookie Dough Dip, I brought these cupcakes to Sunday’s pirate party.

For a while now, I’d been looking for an excuse to try making a healthier version of the popular creme-filled cupcakes. So when I discovered I could stretch the “yo ho/ ho ho” pun and pass these off as pirate-themed, I knew they had to be made. Unlike Hostess’ cupcakes, mine are whole-grain, low in fat and calories, and free of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats.

But seriously, people will eat them up!!

homemade hostess cupcakes

Healthy Hostess Cupcakes

Inspired by My Favorite Chocolate Cupcakes

  • 1 cup spelt, white, or Bob’s gf flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp plus 1/8 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar or xylitol
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 and 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
  • 1 and 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt of choice, such as SoDelicious
  • 1/4 cup applesauce
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 1/2 cup milk of choice
  • marshmallow fluff – I use my Vegan Marshmallow Fluff

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients, then add wet – excluding marshmallow fluff. Don’t overmix. Pour into cupcake tins, and bake for 15-20 minutes. Allow cupcakes to cool, then cut or poke holes in the tops and scoop in the cream. Re-cover the tops. (Recipe continues below.)

healthy hostess cupcake

Frost cupcakes with warmed Hot Chocolate Butter or with melted chocolate chips. Then put the cakes in the fridge for the frosting to harden. Once hard, you can use an icing writer for the tiny squiggles if you wish. Yes, I know the icing isn’t healthy. But it’s only like a 1/8 tsp, so I still feel justified in calling these cupcakes healthy.

vegan hostess cupcake    homemade hostess cupcakes

An alternative to the creme:

Try stuffing them with Healthy Cookie Dough Dip.

Or, you could imitate some of the people at the party and dunk these cupcakes into the cookie dough dip. Sugar on top of sugar. So much for this being a healthy dessert blog!

Published on September 20, 2011

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Chocolate Covered Katie is one of the top 25 food websites in America, and Katie has been featured on The Today Show, CNN, Fox, The Huffington Post, and ABC's 5 O'clock News. Her favorite food is chocolate, and she believes in eating dessert every single day.

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173 Comments

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  1. Jessica says

    Oh my gosh, I absolutely love these cupcakes. I just popped ’em out of the oven and frosted them & I tried one.. absolutely delicious! I am so glad you had this recipe! I urge anyone to try this. 🙂

  2. Angela says

    The best way to fill cupcakes is to use a decorators bag and the long round tip just for this purpose. Push it in to the top of the cake and squeeze in the filling. Frost over the hole.

  3. Julie says

    You are way better off going to a good bakery and buying a cupcake with normal cupcake ingredients than eating a cupcake with a multitude of unhealthy ingredients, do I daresay a dangerous concoction, including cornstarch, one of the worst things you can ever eat.

    • Unofficial CCK Helper says

      Katie’s blog is vegan and there are no dairy products used. Plus, you can find a number of vegan yogurts out there: So Delicious, Wholesoy, Almond Dream, etc.

  4. TriGirlLA says

    These look delicious, but why in the world are these on the Huffington Post “19 Vegan Cupcake Recipes…” list?!?! They have yogurt and milk in them!

  5. Syd says

    For a sugar-free version, blend a cup of sweet dark raisins, like Sultan, with the applesauce instead of adding sugar. If you blend the raisins into a paste, the cupcakes will not taste like raisins, nor will they have pieces of raisin breaking the texture of the cake. Just moist, cakey, sweet… with no added sugar.

  6. Kim says

    First, I just want to say, these look really good! But, I don’t see where it says how many this recipe makes. I currently only have one muffin pan that makes 8 regular sized muffins.

  7. Janet Paula says

    If I wanted to make these cup cakes non-dairy, what can be used instead of the 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt? Thanks.

  8. Janet Paula says

    It would have been so nice to have known about how many cupcakes this recipe would make. If I had known I could have oiled the correct amount of tinfoil cupcake liners. And, how come I don’t see nutritional information.

  9. Laura says

    These are great! I was trying to whip up something in a hurry, so I added chocolate chips & didn’t do the filling (which I think would be amazing!!). They were still wonderful & met our need for quick, healthier cupcakes!! We love your stuff – thank you!! 😀

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