Honey Cupcakes with Honey Cream Cheese Frosting – a delicious cupcake recipe, made from scratch, with local wild flower honey. Created by our contributor, Lauren Kapeluck of EllenJay Events.
Hello friends. It’s Lauren from EllenJay Events. I want to start off first by thanking Carrie for asking me to be a part of her amazingly gorgeous and always inspiring cake blog! I am honored to be a new contributor on The Cake Blog and look forward to sharing many great cupcake recipes and photos with you monthly! Today I am sharing my first cupcake creation to kick off summer, Honey Cupcakes with Honey Cream Cheese Frosting!
The star ingredient is fresh local honey that I picked up at our local farmer’s market a few weeks ago. While my husband and I were scoping out all the vendors we were quickly persuaded to sample some fresh honey. After one taste of a sweet wild flower honey I was sold and quickly purchased a mason jar full! Honey is an ingredient I always keep on hand (usually in the shape of the honey bear) to add some sweetness to smoothies, corn bread, a bowl of oatmeal, homemade granola bars or even dog biscuits for my black lab. Everything tastes better with a little honey right? All it took was one spoonful of honey and I was inspired to create a honey cupcake that I hope you are going to love!
HOW TO MAKE HONEY CUPCAKES WITH HONEY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
Before we jump right to the recipe, I wanted to share with you some basic tools I use all the time when making cupcakes. I find that using a standard size ice cream scoop with a release mechanism is very helpful when filling the cupcake liners and making uniform sized cupcakes. I picked up my scoop at a grocery store a few years ago for just a few dollars and it is one of my absolute favorite kitchen gadgets! When it comes time to decorating cupcakes I absolutely love using a large round piping tip to create a tall swirly design like on these cupcakes! Don’t have a piping tip, just scoop your icing into a large zip lock bag, snip off one bottom corner and start swirling away!
Just looking at these cupcakes makes me happy! These little cakes are extra special because you get a double pop of honey in both the cake and frosting! Add some sugar sprinkles on top and you’ve got a vibrant sweet that is perfect for those bright summery days! Honey Cupcakes would be the perfect addition to a summer picnic or family reunion. You could even add some fresh lemon juice or zest for an extra punch of flavor! Don’t let summer pass you by without giving this recipe a try!
Honey Cupcakes with Honey Cream Cheese Frosting
A delicious cupcake recipe, made from scratch, with local wild flower honey.
- Yield: 12 cupcakes 1x
Ingredients
For the Honey Cupcakes:
- ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Honey Cream Cheese Frosting:
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 4 oz cream cheese, softened
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 3 tablespoons honey
- yellow food coloring (optional)
- yellow sugar sprinkles
Instructions
Make the Honey Cupcakes:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake liners.
- In medium bowl mix together dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In small bowl mix together wet ingredients: buttermilk, honey and vanilla. Set aside.
- In bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until combined.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
- Gradually add the dry and wet ingredients, alternating starting and ending with dry ingredients and mix until combined.
- Using ice cream scoop fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean.
- Let cupcakes cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.
Make the Honey Cream Cheese Frosting
- In bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and cream cheese until combined.
- Gradually add confectioners’ sugar and continue to mixing scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
- Mix in honey.
- If desired, add a few drops of yellow food coloring to slightly tint the icing.
- Place the icing in a piping bag fitted with a round decorating tip and swirl the frosting on top of the cooled cupcake, going in a circular motion.
- Top with yellow sugar sprinkles.
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
Honey Butter Cake
Lemon Honey Apricot Cake
Dark Chocolate Honeycomb Cake
Golden Honeycomb Cake
Honeycomb and Gilded Bee Cake
Linda – Did you have the butter at room temp or melted? Melted butter can cause crumbly cupcakes. Also, did you overbake them? When I make cupcakes I preheat to 350. When I put them down I immediately decrease the temp to 325. This is an old baker’s trick – they rise so much better this way. You get rounded tops instead of flat. Also, I check them a few minutes before the recommended bake time because my oven runs hot. For these I baked at 325 for 18 mins and they came out beautifully! I made three dozen.
I came across this recipe and decided to try making them for a friend who loves honey. Instead of a cupcake, I used a whoopie pie pan. They were delicious! I was sad that I had to give them away. I will definitely be making these again. Thanks for the recipe!
This is way too delicious, i have to add it to my blog if you dont mind 🙂
Honey cupcakes are my favourite. These pictures make my mouth watering. I am going to try this today.
It came out delicious! I baked it in a round cake pan for 25 mins.
Hi, they look great, can you tell me if you can use creamed honey instead of regular honey to make these.
Thank you x
These are the fluffiest and the softest cupcakes I’ve ever eaten. They are perfectly sweet and the honey flavour is irresistable. Perfection!!! Thank you so much for this recipe.
I made these for my daughter’s Winnie the Pooh themed 2nd birthday party. EVERYONE had seconds and raved bout how good they were. I am making them again today for a contest at church. I hope I win!
These cupcakes look so delicious. I have never made any honey cupcakes before. And the honey cream cheese icing sound wonderful! Thanks for posting this recipe.
Absolutely lovely!
Any idea how well that frosting would hold up in summer humidity? I’d like to make them for a baby shower as well but it’s an outdoor party at the end of August.
Cream cheese frosting is typically pretty soft – and one that requires refrigeration for any extended amount of time – so this might not be your best bet for an outdoor party where the cupcakes would be sitting out in the heat.
You can find other great cake and cupcake options in our Recipe Section.
I found this via Pinterest and it looks amazing! However, the picture it is pinned with shows a decorative honeycomb vs just the colored sugar. What was used to make the honeycomb? Is it melted white chocolate or fondant?
Hi Kate – I’m not familiar with the photo you’ve described. Perhaps it was for a different honey cupcake recipe? Either way, I hope you give our recipe a try!
You may want to check out this Golden Honeycomb Wedding Cake for decorating inspiration. Oh, and this Honeycomb & Guilded Bee Cake is beautiful as well. Both of these honeycomb techniques were created with fondant.
I made these this week for our church’s women’s group. FANTASTIC! They were a hit, and I have people asking me for the recipe (I’ll be sending the link around), and if I’ll show them how to do it! I wasn’t too keen on the frosting, it tasted too buttery, so I added about a teaspoon of vanilla. After refrigerating it for 2 hours, the butter flavor was masked better.
Oh I also tripled the recipe.
Could normal milk be used in the cake.
You can add lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk to create a buttermilk substitute. Here’s how to do it! Measure 1/2 scant cup of milk. Stir in 1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar. Let the mixture stand at room temperature for 5 to 10 minutes. When it is ready, the milk will be slightly thickened and you will see small curdled bits. Use this substitute (including curdled bits) as you would the buttermilk.
Just made these cupcakes and they were delicious! Absolutely light and a perfect balance between the frosting and cupcake! Thanks for a great recipe 🙂
I just found this recipe on Pinterest and decided to make them for the family. They are delicious! My mom loved them so much she ate three of them in one sitting!!!
I adore this recipe . I would like to use vanilla flavor only this time because I loved the consistency as I can get to do it. Thank you very much in advance , I hope your answer
I made these cupcakes today for a school function. I did use a regular vanilla cream cheese frosting, as I ran out of honey and did not have time to run to the store. I absolutely LOVED the cupcakes! I will never make regular vanilla cupcakes again! I followed the instructions exactly as written and they were perfection. My only complaint is that I didn’t make a second batch. 🙂 Thank you for such an easy and delicious recipe! Can’t wait to try them with the honey frosting next time.
I have to admit, I have never commented on a blog before, but I feel compelled to write something because this recipe is absolutely AMAZING! I made the cupcakes, and I also used the cake recipe to make cake with buttercream frosting. The cake is the perfect amount of moist with the perfect flavor and perfect consistency. Plus, the hint of honey is really nice. SO DELICIOUS! Everyone was very impressed. This recipe is a definite keeper! Thank you!
My daughter made these for us TWICE! We got 15 cupcakes out of them and had a ton of frosting left so she made another batch!!! We also didn’t have buttermilk and subbed fat-free milk with a tablespoon of white vinegar added. We loved these. Also uploaded the ingredients to My Fitness Pal to get a basic idea of the calorie count. I got 192 for each of the 15 cupcakes with half the amount of frosting added. These were so good!
These tasted JUST like my mother-in-law’s honey butter cornbread muffin recipe that she handed down to me. How strange!! And the frosting was so guwy! What a perfect summertime treat – I think I’ll make these for my daughter’s PTA bake sale!!!
YUMMMMMMM!!!!
I want to make these for my son’s 2nd Pooh birthday party, but with a lemon cream cheese frosting so I can achieve a natural yellow hued frosting. Would that be a weird flavor addition on top?
Personally I think lemon works well with honey! So I don’t think it would be weird at all. Only thing though – most lemon cream cheese frostings don’t have much of a yellow hue, except maybe a fleck of yellow from lemon zest. Just something to keep in mind. Enjoy!
I made these for my daughter’s 3rd birthday. Everyone loved them. They have such a wonderful honey flavor and nice texture. I can’t wait to make them again, but next time I want to decorate them like you have in the picture.
Hi! I just want to say Yum-my!! I think I used a little too much flour as my cupcakes were a little dense. But the flavor!! And the slight honey crunch top was amazing!
But I always have trouble with my icing being runny! Any tips?