Citrus Cauli Cupcakes
Zesty, chewy and moreish, these little cupcakes will be a total winner for your entire family. Hand these cupcakes out to waiting hands and get them to guess the secret ingredient! Cauliflower is a fabulous veg to add to cakes as it gives a moistness and a great soft texture. Trust me, the lovely orange flavour shines through so they don’t taste at all ”cauliflowery”!
I use spelt flour in this recipe. Spelt is a type of ancient wheat grain that is easy on the gut and highly nutritious. It does contain gluten, but you can easily substitute for a gluten-free version if needed. These cupcakes are also naturally dairy-free. Coconut sugar is a made from the sap of the coconut palm and is lower GI than normal sugar, so it doesn’t give such a big sugar rush and then crash.
Get our lovely Healthy Bites newsletter!
Each week, you’ll get an amazing recipe, a useful health tip, and an ingredient to jazz up your shopping basket!
Citrus Cauli Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 200 g Cauliflower
- 2 Oranges
- 125 g Coconut Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 65 g Olive Oil
- 150 g Spelt Flour
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
Icing (optional)
- 6 tbsp Icing Sugar
- 2 tsp Orange (juice)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan) and line a muffin/cupcake tray with 12 paper cases.
- Break the cauliflower into florets, and blitz it on pulse mode in a blender until finely chopped and looking like couscous.
- Zest the oranges into a mixing bowl. Squeeze the juice into a separate small bowl or jug and set aside.
- Into the mixing bowl, add the coconut sugar, eggs and vanilla extract and whisk well. Add the finely chopped cauliflower, 4 tbsp of the reserved orange juice and olive oil and whisk again.
- Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixing bowl, and fold through to combine.
- Divide the batter between the paper cases, and bake for 20 minutes, until golden, springy and cooked all through (test with a cake tester). Allow to cool for a couple of minutes, then transfer onto a rack to thoroughly cool.
- Optional – for the icing, mix the icing sugar with 2 tsp of the reserved orange juice, then drizzle over the cooled cupcakes.
Notes
- Suitable from 12 months without the icing.
- If you don’t have coconut sugar, you can substitute with golden caster sugar or light soft brown sugar. Reduce the added sugar by 1 teaspoon every time you bake these cupcakes to wean your family off over sweet foods. Let me know how low you can go to keep them sweet enough to satisfy!
- For a gluten-free version swap the spelt flour for a gluten-free alternative such as sorghum flour or a good quality gluten-free flour blend. We have not successfully recipe tested this for an egg-free version yet.
- These can be kept in an airtight container for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 3 months.
Per serving. Nutrition content in food is never consistent, so take these estimates with a pinch of salt! Also, our recipes tend to use low-GI carbs and sugars, so these values are not directly comparable with shop-bought UPFs.
Get more recipes like this
Lucinda's cookbooks
The Good Stuff
Over 100 easy recipes for toddlers to teens, with clever swaps for the main allergens.
Brain Brilliance
60 nourishing recipes and a nutrition toolkit for dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism and all neurodivergent kids.
I Can't Believe It's Baby Food
Cook once with more than 120 weaning recipes from six months that the whole family can share.
Three bestselling family nutrition cookbooks from NatureDoc founder Lucinda Miller, packed with recipes that feed growing brains, gut and immunity.
Delicious! My daughter loved them but then looked a little puzzled and horrified when I told her the secret ingredient! Didn’t stop her having another though!!
These are a favourite and after testing the recipe on friends and family, no one guesses that it contains cauliflower! I think it has a sticky toffee pudding flavour