Sweet Potato Cupcakes

If you are craving the warm and cozy flavors of fall, you are going to love these homemade Sweet Potato Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting!

These cupcakes are ultra moist, have a soft and creamy texture, and amazing flavor from sweet potatoes, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Keep this delicious recipe in mind for fall birthdays, Thanksgiving, and other celebrations!

Why we Love Them

There are so many reasons to love these Sweet Potato Cupcakes. Here are just a few!

• Ultra moist and soft
• Easy to make scratch recipe!
• Perfect fall flavors
• This recipe makes just over two dozen cupcakes.
• We love sweet potato desserts! We've also made scratch Sweet Potato Cake and Sweet Potato Bundt Cake.

How to Make Sweet Potato Cupcakes

You can find the full, printable cupcake recipe card further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line cupcake pan(s) with cupcake liners.
• In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.  Set Aside

• In another bowl, add the sweet potato puree, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract. Set aside.

• In the bowl of your electric mixer (using a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), add the softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.  Then, gradually add the white sugar and brown sugar, and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy. 

• Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of the milk/sweet potato mixture). Mix just until last addition is combined.

• This recipe makes about 7 cups of batter. Fill the cupcake liners with about ¼ cup of batter each.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Baking times may vary. (Peek in at the 15 minute mark and adjust time as needed.)
• Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, or when tops spring back when lightly touched. We like to remove the cupcakes from the pans immediately after baking.

Cream Cheese Frosting

We love cream cheese frosting with our spice cakes! We've used this recipe (or spiced variations) with all sorts of classic cakes, from Hummingbird Cake and Spice Cake to Italian Cream Cake and more.

This frosting is a combination of softened cream cheese, unsalted butter, confectioners sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt.

As with most cream cheese frosting recipes, this frosting is a bit on the softer side. It is easy to frost with and pipe with, but you may need to pop your bowl or piping bag into the refrigerator for a few minutes if it becomes too soft.

Decorating the Cupcakes

You can decorate the sweet potato cupcakes however you like. We used our large star (1M) piping tip to create simple swirls. Then, we topped each cupcake with a pecan.

Recipe FAQs

More Fall Cake Recipes

We've made many delicious fall cake recipes over the years! Some of our most popular are our Caramel Cake, Pumpkin Spice Latte Cake, Caramel Apple Cake, and Spice Cake.

Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy the recipe. Don't miss our full collection of tried and true Cake Recipes! There, you'll find cake recipes from scratch as well as delicious cake mix recipes.

Also, if you are interested in cake design, we have many Cake Decorating Tutorials that we have made over the years! You'll find everything from How to Make a Cake to favorite Fall Cake Designs, Birthday Cake Designs, and more!

Sweet Potato Cupcakes

BY Melissa and Bebe

These ultra moist, soft Sweet Potato Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting are perfect for fall!

Prep Time: 15 minutes mins

Cook Time: 18 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 28 cupcakes

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Ingredients

For the Sweet Potato Cupcakes

• ▢ 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened (170g)
• ▢ 1 cup granulated/white sugar (200g)
• ▢ 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed (217g)
• ▢ 3 eggs, room temperature (If in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for five minutes.)
• ▢ 15 oz can sweet potato puree (425g) sweet potatoes — you could also use fresh cooked sweet potato puree (1 ½ cups)
• ▢ ½ cup milk (121g)
• ▢ ⅓ cup vegetable oil (we use canola oil) (68g)
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (12g)
• ▢ 3 cups cake flour (342g) See Notes for a substitution if you do not have cake flour.
• ▢ 2 teaspoons baking powder (8g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon baking soda (3g)
• ▢ 2 teaspoons cinnamon (6g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon nutmeg (1g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (3g)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• ▢ 2 sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened
• ▢ 16 oz cream cheese, softened. (452g total) We used two 8 oz packages of full fat cream cheese.
• ▢ 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (8g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
• ▢ 6 cups powdered sugar (690g) You can adjust amount slightly up or down to your liking.

Decoration

• ▢ We topped the cupcakes with pecans.

Instructions

For the Sweet Potato Cake Layers

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
• In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.  Set Aside
• In another bowl, add the sweet potatoes, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Set Aside.
• In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.  Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy. 
• Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended. 
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of the milk/sweet potato mixture). After the last addition, mix just until combined.
• This recipe makes about 7 cups of batter. Fill the cupcake liners with about ¼ cup of batter each (for a total of about 28 cupcakes.)
• Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes (Peek in at the 15 minute mark and adjust time as needed.) Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, or when tops spring back when lightly touched.  Let cool 5 to 10 minutes and turn out.

Cream Cheese Frosting

• Add softened butter to mixer. Mix on low to medium speed until the butter is softened and smooth.
• Add the softened cream cheese to the butter, mixing at low to medium speed until incorporated.
• Add the vanilla extract. Gradually add the powdered sugar, mixing on low speed as the sugar is incorporated.
• Increase mixing speed slightly and mix until fluffy and well combined. Be careful not to overmix. If the frosting becomes too soft, chill it in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes or until it reaches desired consistency for frosting the cooled cupcakes.
• This frosting will pipe best if used while still chilled. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly (do not microwave) and remix.
• We frosted our cooled cupcakes using a 1M large star piping tip. Decorate however you like! We swirled frosting onto the cupcakes and then topped each with a pecan.
• Because of the cream cheese frosting, these cupcakes should be refrigerated (in an airtight container or under a cake dome). However, for best flavor and texture, allow to warm closer to room temperature before serving. Remove from the refrigerator 1-2 hours before serving.

Notes

Substitution for Cake Flour -

Using all purpose flour (plain in the UK)  - For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in UK).  This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch , whisk to blend.

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