Healthier Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes that taste amazing. Made with hearty, healthy ingredients like oats, coconut & pineapple and NO oil or flour so they are vegan, gluten-free & oil-free. There is absolutely no way anyone would ever know though. Perfect eaten as they are but even better served warm with a big dollop of ice-cream!
*drools* Be prepared for your world to be turned up side down when you bake yourself up some of these Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes.
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OH.MY.GOODNESS.
I had no idea they would be so good when I threw them together as a first practice for a full on cake.
You see, when I am making a new cake recipe, I often start off by just making a few muffins or cupcakes. That way, if it all goes terribly wrong, I don't waste too many ingredients. And if it all goes right, all I have to do is scale it up and adjust the cooking time.
But, nothing got wasted the first time I made these. That first batch was hoovered up in no time. Always a good sign.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake has been a popular reader request and I did try to bring it to you, but these cute little cupcakes were way too nice to forget about. So I'm sorry (but not sorry) that you don't have cake. These more than make up for it and I will get to the full-on cake version eventually and you have cupcakes to keep you happy in the meantime. I think that's fair.
Serving suggestions
These are cupcakes and they are perfect eaten just as they are. But, get a warm one, add a dollop of So Delicious vanilla ice cream and you have DESSERT HEAVEN. I'm tellin' ya. It takes them up a million notches and they turn into a dinner party-worthy dessert. Or just a mid-week after-dinner dessert for greedy people...I'm not looking at you...
OK well I might be a bit, but mostly I mean me.
If there is anything remotely like dessert in the house then I'm having it and ain't nobody gonna stop me.
How to make Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes
(For detailed measurements and instructions, see the printable recipe card).
OK. Let me start by telling you that you are going to need a blender. If you do not have a blender see the section below titled "WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE A BLENDER".
A high powered blender like a Blendtec or a Vitamix makes the whole process much easier because it can handle everything all at once:
Here's how it's done:
Step 1 - Grease a muffin pan with a little oil if it needs it. I use this USA Pan Muffin Pan. I have had it for ages and it still looks perfectly new and muffins slide out without any oil at all. I only used oil in my step by step photos and video because I know a lot of you will need to grease your pans and I didn't want you to forget.
Once greased, pop a circle of parchment paper in the bottom of each. I used the bottom of one of the muffin holes on the pan as a rather awkward and hard to draw around circle template, but once you've got one done you can then use that to draw around to get the rest. You might even have a ramekin, lid, jar or glass that is a similar size that you can use.
Step 2 - Put a teaspoon of coconut sugar in each muffin hole.
Step 3 - Put some pineapple slices on top of the coconut sugar. The juice from this, along with the sugar is what what makes the yummy, caramel-y top!
Step 4 - Puree some pineapple
Step 5 - Add all of the other ingredients except the baking powder and baking soda to the blender and blend up until completely smooth
Step 6 - Add the baking soda and powder and blend again
Step 7 - Spoon batter into each muffin hole and bake
Here are the Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes fresh out of the oven:
Then all there is left to do is to turn them out. Please note - They are amazing eaten while still warm from the oven!
What if I don't have a blender?
A good food processor will probably be ok to use at a push. You know your machine. If it can't blend pineapple up smooth, or make oat flour from oats then it won't work for this recipe.
But, if you don't have a food processor or a blender, as long as you can get your pineapple pureed up somehow, maybe with a stick blender and you buy ready made oat flour you will get by just fine mixing these Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes up by hand.
Using a blender is what makes these cupcakes really easy peasy though. Literally everything goes in there. You pulverize. Done. I love blender recipes!
If you do use a food processor (or a less powerful blender) it's probably best if you grind up the oats into flour first rather than just throwing everything in at once. It will make it easier for your blender to handle and it won't have to work so hard.
How to make oat flour
If you do need to make your own oat flour it's really easy and much cheaper than buying it ready made from the store. Generally you get the same volume of oat flour as you do the amount of whole oats you started with. So use 1½ cups of oats and you will get 1½ cups of flour (assuming you don't sieve it - see my notes about that below).
Here's how:
Add oats (rolled, quick or steel cut) to a blender and blend on high speed until the oats are a fine powder.
OPTIONAL - Sieve the oat flour and put the fine flour in one container and the larger bits remaining in the sieve in another container.
I tend to just use it straight from the blender without sieving and that is absolutely fine when making this Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes recipe or my Almond Cherry Muffins. But if you do sieve it first, you will generally get lighter and fluffier results in cakes and muffins.
Use up the larger bits in cookies or use it as 'instant' oatmeal if you do sieve it.
Success Tip - As with all of my baking recipes where precision is key to excellent results, I highly recommend using a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients, rather than using cup measurements (although I do include both for your convenience). I love this one because it is very reasonably priced and it has a tare function which is really handy. It means you can place any bowl on the scale and reset to zero so it doesn’t include the weight in it’s calculation, plus you can reset to zero when adding multiple ingredients to the same bowl which saves on washing up!
Hungry for more?
For more baked recipes using oat flour, check out these great options:
- Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies
- Gluten-Free Lemon Cake with Blueberries
- Almond Cherry Muffins
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
- Fudgy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chocolate pumpkin Donuts
📖 Recipe
Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes
Author:
Ingredients
- 6 teaspoons coconut sugar
- around ¼ of a fresh pineapple or 1½ cups of prepared and cut pineapple chunks pineapple , can be fresh or canned*
- 60g / ½ packed cup unsweetened shredded coconut , desiccated coconut in the UK
- 100g / ½ cup sugar , cane sugar, turbinado or coconut sugar are all ok
- 150g / 1½ cups rolled oats or oat flour , sometimes called old fashioned oats. Quick oats will also work. See recipe notes if you do not have a high powered blender* (be sure to use certified gluten-free oats if necessary)
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 30mls / 2 tablespoons milk of choice
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda , bicarbonate of soda in the UK
RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat oven to 425°F and lightly grease 6 holes in a muffin pan. Add a small circle of parchment paper to the bottom of each hole.
- Spoon 1 teaspoon of coconut sugar into each hole.
- From the pineapple chunks, slice 18 2-3mm slices and lay 3 pieces on top of the coconut sugar in each hole.
- Put the rest of the pineapple in a blender and blend until completely smooth. Spoon it out into a ½ cup measure or weigh 110g. You should have just enough. If not you will need to blend a little more up. Save any remaining to eat, or add to a smoothie, and return the ½ cup/110g of pineapple puree to the blender. It's important to get the right amount of pineapple puree so don't just eye ball it.
- To the pineapple puree in the blender, add the shredded coconut, sugar, oats, salt, vanilla extract, vinegar and milk. Everything EXCEPT the baking powder and soda. Blend until completely smooth. You might need to stop and scrape down some oats that fly up and stick to the sides and top.
- Then add the baking powder and soda but make sure that your oven is preheated and your pan is ready to go before you do. With all of the acid in the batter it will react quite quickly and you don't want to hang around before putting them in the oven. All of the bubbling action will make lighter cupcakes. So add it and blend it up on high speed for a few seconds then proceed to the next step immediately.
- Spoon an even amount of batter into each hole of the muffin pan. I use an ice cream scoop and used 2 scoops per hole, then get them right into the hot oven. Bake for 5 minutes on 425°F then turn the oven down to 375°F and bake for a further 13-15 minutes, or until they are well risen, starting to come away from the sides a bit and a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.
- Leave in the pan for 5 - 10 minutes then lay a cooling rack face down on top and carefully flip the muffin pan over on to it before lifting the pan gently off. Then pull off the round pieces of parchment paper and either eat them (yay!) or leave them to cool on the rack.
NOTES
NUTRITION
Nutritional information is provided for convenience & as a courtesy. The data is a computer generated estimate so should be used as a guide only.
Holly says
I made these as written except substituted almond flour for the coconut and made in a mini muffin pan. Very tasty! They popped right out of the pan and looked like pretty little cakes.
Kirsty Gwilliam says
Really very delicious. Initially I was concerned that oats (had to blitz my own) would make super heavy sponges, especially when I saw the numbly texture of the batter. However I’m very pleased to say that they’re much lighter than expected with an addictive moist chewiness. Teamed with the flavours of the coconut sugar, pineapple pulp and desiccated coconut the dessert is a winner!
Vivian says
Hi,
I want to make mini cakes (using mini cupcake tines). What do you recommend for timing/temp?
Thanks,
Vivian
A Virtual Vegan says
I'd cook them on 375°F for probably about 13 - 15 minutes or until they are well risen, starting to come away from the sides a bit and a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. It is a guess though as I don't have mini muffin pans so have never tried it so keep an eye on them towards the end just in case.
Kleanthis @ Yumbles says
Pineapple upside down cake was a personal favourite made by my grandma. Hopefully this recipe will awaken many childhood memories. What quantities should I use if I want to make a proper cake out of this recipe?
A Virtual Vegan says
I hope it does! My recipe makes 6 muffins and a muffin hole is about 1/2 a cup so once cooked the batter fills about 3 cups total. An 8 inch wide, 2 inch deep round pan has a volume of about 6 cups so I think you would need to double this recipe to fill one. If your cake pan is a different size check here https://www.cooksinfo.com/baking-pans-by-volume because it lists the volumes of all the different size cake pans. Then you can scale up accordingly. With all of my recipes, if you hover over the amount of servings a little bar pops up that you can slide to increase the servings. It then adjusts all of the ingredient amounts accordingly to save you having to work it out. I hope that helps!
Aparna says
Hi
I made this pineapple cake (without the pineapple topping) and cut them into pieces ,dipped them in a chocolate sauce and rolled them over shredded coconut to form nice mini lamingtons.They turned out wonderful.I have the pictures but not sure how to share them in the comments section.
Thanks for all the wonderful vegan recipes.Keep them coming !
A Virtual Vegan says
Ah! I saw your pictures on Instagram but didn't realize you used the cake to make the lamingtons. I thought that was a different recipe. What a brilliant idea and how creative! You can't share pictures in the comments here which is a shame. Thank you so much for leaving feedback. I really appreciate it!
Dee says
This simple recipe was made by my tween to my delight! We made a double batch with purchased oat flour and canned pineapple. In one pan we used large cupcake liners which made cleanup a bit easier. I didn't think I'd like the coconut, but it gave a little crunch . Warm or cold, these little cakes are naughty! :-) I may not wait for my daughter to whip up another batch. I think Mommy needs another treat. Thank you Mel!
A Virtual Vegan says
Oo lucky you. I wish my son would cook for me. I'm so glad you enjoyed them and yes, Mommy deserves another treat very soon!
Therese says
the sounds fabulous also can you freeze these and also what about using buckwheat flour love your site you're just a wonderful little person,
Also could we use almond flour or teff flour in place of the oats thank you for sharing all your wonderful beautiful vegan recipes Therese from California
A Virtual Vegan says
Thank you for your kind words! I have never baked with buckwheat flour or teff flour so don't know about that. I have made these with almond flour while testing though and although they tasted lovely, they had no structure and were so delicate that they crumbled as you tried to pick them up. As for freezing, I would imagine they would freeze really well although I haven't tried it. They didn't last long enough for that! Hope that helps!
Andrea Joanne Friesen says
I am very appreciative of this right now. Even though my hubby and I are both vegans - about a year now.My hubby has recently found out that he has sensitive intolerance to so many of the foods that we have still been eating which includes: wheat, rice, cashews, barley...the list goes on. These, he can eat!
Thank goodness he can still eat oats and coconut...yaay.
Thank you so much!
I look forward to trying these and you have made my husband very happy!
A Virtual Vegan says
What good timing I have! I'm so glad to have made him happy and I hope you both (him especially) enjoy them! If he's ok with almonds, this recipe is very similar https://avirtualvegan.com/almond-cherry-muffins/
Andrea Joanne Friesen says
Ha ha these look great as well but unfortunately he can't have almonds or apples or cherries - and we have a cherry tree.
My poor sensitive man!
A Virtual Vegan says
Oh well, he'll have to just eat pineapple cupcakes until they come out of his ears instead!:OP
Mary says
These look and sound amazing. Thank you!
A Virtual Vegan says
You're welcome. I hope you enjoy them!
Lynn says
How many carbs are in each cupcake? Your nutitional list does not say.
A Virtual Vegan says
Thanks for letting me know. I just corrected it and there are about 37g.
Aimee says
These are lovely! Do you think it would be alright to omit the coconut? Thanks. :)
A Virtual Vegan says
Hi Aimee. Thank you! The coconut in them provides the fat and replaces any oil that might otherwise be used. If you omit it the texture would suffer, plus the liquid (milk and pureed pineapple) might need adjusting a little bit too. A better option, if you can eat nuts, would be to use almond flour instead of the coconut. I have a very similar recipe like that so I know it will work ok. Hopefully that will work for you!