Sweet Potato Cupcakes topped with Maple Marshmallow Frosting are flavorful, moist and so unique!
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You know how people argue over whether the traditional thanksgiving sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows is too sweet for a side dish? Or maybe topping a casserole with candies isn’t considered sophisticated enough cuisine for today’s average consumer, aka food snob.
Personally, I don’t see the problem. Too sweet for a side dish? Uh, hello. Dessert. Duh. So simple, right?
Enter these phenomenal cupcakes. Sweet potato, topping with marshmallow. Unmistakably thanksgiving. Unmistakably dessert. Unmistakably delicious.
PS: did you think sweet potatoes and baking don’t work together? Think again! They are delicious and go perfectly with the spices generally associated with fall baking. If you don’t have sweet potatoes on hand though, feel free to sub canned pumpkin. Either way, you definitely want to try these!
- 1 cup oil
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup sweet potato puree (from about 2 medium sweet potatoes)*
- 2 cups flour
- Preheat oven to 350. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, on medium speed, beat together the oil and egg for a couple of minutes until combined and slightly thickened.
- Add the sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and baking powder. Beat to combine. Add the sweet potato puree and beat to combine.
- Turn the mixer to low and add the flour. Stir until just combined. Don’t overmix.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared pans, filling the cups about ¾ full.
- Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Set aside to cool completely before frosting.
- *Bake the sweet potatoes at 350 for about an hour. Set aside to cool. Remove the skin and mash the sweet potato.
And don’t forget the frosting!
- 2 sticks (1 cup) margarine
- 2 cups marshmallow fluff
- 2 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat together the margarine and marshmallow fluff until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat until smooth.
- Spoon or pipe the frosting over the cooled cupcakes and enjoy!
- To pipe the frosting high like I did in the picture, you will need to double the frosting recipe. Pipe it with a large star tip, such as a wilton 1M.
Like these? You’ll love the following:
Honey Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
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Hope your week is going superbly! Enjoy the cupcakes! PS – don’t forget to enter the cookbook giveaway that I have going on now! And come back soon for more amazing treats! -Miriam
It looks delicious!
I love this idea! I love sweet potatoes and for awhile thought instead of making carrot cake for dessert that I should make sweet potato cake. Can’t wait to try this
What gorgeous cupcakes! The icing is spectacular.
Sounds so good! I will have to make these some day!
Do you think we could use baby food sweet potatoes? Btw, I love your recipes. They are interesting and doable!
Oh the frosting! I want to put it on everything.
Agree with the comment above – what stunning looking cupcakes!
I must admit like you said I have never thought of sweet potato in a cake but must give this a try! Great post 🙂
Heaven!
Can I substitute pancake syrup for the maple?
I love your thinking on turning the casserole into dessert! And since I love marshmallows so much, I could probably just eat spoonfuls of the frosting alone.
Reblogged this on Love you forever, Mom and commented:
Love this idea!! Will definitely make it!
These cupcakes are absolutely stunning!
they look yummy!
I just made these for shabbos. (My in laws r coming.) They are out of this world!! Thanx so much.
Could real butter be used in place of margarine? I can’t say I’m a fan of the flavor….
Sure! I only use margarine to keep it mom dairy.
What is marshmallow fluff?? Can i buy it or do I make it?
I made these For my husbands crew at the Fire station, took them 18 cup cakes and not one came home. Thank You for a most amazing cupcake!
These look amazing! I love the frosting!!!
I’ve featured this recipe on my blog, hoping that you don’t mind, but if you do, please contact me and I’ll remove it. All the best.
Hi!
How far in advance can/should the icing be made? I’m making the cupcakes 1 day in advance of a shower I’m throwing and hoping to freeze those (for easier frosting). Can the icing also be made and refrigerated a day before?
A day before shouldn’t be a problem. I wouldn’t freeze the frosting though.
I have sweet potato pie filling left over from a few pies I are could I use this filling for these cupcakes??? Would I still need all the eggs??
I wouldn’t recommend subbing that in this recipe.
Can you please specify what type of oil that I should use? Thank you.
I use canola.
While the cupcakes were baking, they fell! Like, a huge crater-like fall! I don’t know what I did wrong. I kept the oven closed. Does the puree have to be creamy-liquidy? Does it matter that I used vegetable oil and not canola? Did I mix them too much? The taste was great, but they were definitely NOT cupcakes!
The same thing happened to me. They fell in the center and didn’t rise at all. The taste was there but the appearance was not there. I didn’t bother to make the frosting because I didn’t want it to go to waste. 🙁
I would recommend not beating the eggs for a long time – doing so can make the cake dense and not rise. Try that and see if it works? I have not made this yet so I couldn’t tell you if that will fix it, that’s just what I’ve learned from other baking tips in the past.
oh my gawd, these cupcakes?!!!! LOVE these. . must try soon! Pinned!
I made these this past weekend. They were amazing!!!!! Next time I will use less maple syrup. I could do without the sweet smoky taste in the icing. Lovely recipe. Thanks!
I was wondering if the frosting would turn out okay if I omitted the maple syrup. We are not big syrup fans and I want to make these for Thanksgiving so I am hoping that just omitting it won’t mess with the consistency ?
You can probably leave it out, or sub honey if you prefer the flavor.
Made these delicious things, but the frosting is so liquidy it wont hold any form. I’ve refrigerated it and everything. Kinda sad looking cupcakes, mine are. Delicious but sad.
The cupcakes are awesome. And the frosting is also good too, but like Krissyashh said, it will not hold shape and is not fluffy. I followed directions exactly (or so I thought). It has the consistency of the gooey marshmallow.
Any tips would be appreciated!
I agree. I just made them, & as I piped the icing on, it ran everywhere& totally lost the shape. Next time, I’ll add more confectioner’s sugar & maybe cut the marshmallow cream a tad. I love the combination of flavors, though! Delicious!!
i made these last week for thanksgiving and they were a big hit! Did not have a single one left.
Can you use this same recipe to make a cake, if so would you tweak anything and what would you recommend for baking temp & time?
Love this! Im thinking of making some but we usually use whole wheat flour in our house. Would the recipe work if I used whole wheat flour instead?
I made these and brought them into work and everybody freaked out! 12 were gone in a flash. Everyone is asking for me the recipe!
I made these with half regular/half gluten-free flour. They came out good, a little sunken in the middle like some others commented. At least half the batch was. I am thinking they need to bake a few more minutes. The only thing for me is the amount of sugar. Two cups is a lot when you are trying to reduce sugar and they are VERY sweet. Can the sugar be reduced or will it affect the finished product? I used a different frosting (cream cheese) with very little sugar because they were so sweet. It balanced it well.
Using gluten free flour may have affected the baking time. I can’t say about the sugar, as I haven’t tried it, but any changes to the recipes will have an effect on the recipe.
LOVE the flavor of this cupcake and have made it several times! I keep having two problems though. The center of the cupcakes always cave in. I’ve tried several things to try and help, but none of them have worked. Also, the frosting never holds shape beautifully as seen in your photo, rather it melts into one big blob. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.
I have made this recipe a few times and they sank in the first time but I have not had that problem
with the last few batches – make sure you beat the eggs and oil until it thickens and then as you add the remaining ingredients be sure you are not overbearing the batter and be sure you don’t open the oven
May be a dumb question, but I know some people call yams “sweet potatoes”… so are these actual sweet potatoes or yams; like how people make candied yams?
AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do u cook the potato first then purée ?
THIS ICING IS THE BEST ICING IN THE WORLD!!! I bake lots and lots and look for good recipes on Pinterest and this one caught my eye. I followed the recipe and the results were so delicious. Best tasting icing ever…
Cupcakes spread a TON, came out flat andglued to the pan. Tasted great but not selling quality. Love love love the frosting though!
Sounds like it might be an issue with your leavener.
I had the same issue. I used good quality, new, baking powder and baking soda. I am baking them again today and will try filling my papers a bit less than normal to see if that helps.
I will say, though, normally I would not leave crisp, flat edges on a cupcake, but these were reminiscent of a snickerdoodle cookie, so I wasn’t too upset. They weren’t the prettiest cupcakes I’ve ever made, but they certainly were delicious..so, I won’t be extremely disappointed if the same thing happens this go round. Baking them for a charity golf outing since the “ugly” test batch got all thumbs up from my taste testers 🙂
Just made my second batch of these and they came out beautifully! I bought new flour for this batch. Even though the flour I used in the last batch was newer,I checked and it didn’t have long before it was “expired”, which tells me it had been sitting on the grocery shelf a while (I didn’t think to check it last time..although I should have)
Anyhow..that fixed the spreading and sinking for me 🙂
Can you make the frosting with real marshmallows instead of marshmallow fluff?
I made these and they are great! I made mini cupcakes. The icing is amazing!
A little scared to make these the comments are saying a lot of falling centers and the frosting not having a lot of form
Can the frosting be made with butter instead of margarine? I don’t buy margarine.
Sure!
One of my favorite cupcakes to make EVER!!! A huge hit with my family and friends. I made a cinnamon brown sugar cream cheese frosting. It was perfect blend and set the cupcake off just right.
Looking forward to making these cupcakes! Sweet Potatoes recipes are hard to come by…especially pastry or cake types. Thanks
This looks so good! What a great treat to make for Thanksgiving!
Looks so yummy! Can’t wait to try this weekend!! Is this the cooking time for regular size cupcakes or mini ones? If regulars, how would you adjust the cooking time for minis?