Red Velvet Cupcakes {AIP, Paleo}

These AIP cupcakes are totally deserving of the name "red velvet" because they're chocolate-like, moist, fluffy, and indulgent. They're gluten, dairy, egg, and refined-sugar free (paleo and AIP compliant).

Did you know, you can use freeze-dried beet powder for color/nutrition in the cake portion and yogurt for a bit of tang in the frosting? These two ingredients are optional but help capture the red velvet concept which typically contains red food dye added to chocolate cake batter and cream cheese added to frosting.

Jump to:

• Chocolate AIP Cupcakes
• Ingredients for AIP Cupcakes
• AIP Cupcake Batter Texture
• Carob Red Velvet Cupcakes {AIP, Paleo}

Chocolate AIP Cupcakes

I recently started the AIP elimination diet, which got me craving red velvet cupcakes (of all things) so I decided to create this carob version and totally nailed it.

If you are here because you've been dying for an AIP allergen-friendly cupcake, this is for you! These will totally make your diet easier and more celebratory for birthdays or those chocolate cravings sans the actual chocolate.

For eggless cupcakes, these sure do have a moist, substantial texture which is pretty difficult to achieve in AIP bakes. This is because the recipe uses both banana and banana flour in a few ways (details and photos below).

Ingredients for AIP Cupcakes

For the dry ingredients:

• Green banana flour-I've used this flour in a handful of recipes and consider it to be a great bread-like flour for all-purpose baking.
• Tigernut flour-One of my pantry staples for good reason! I use this in baking, pancake and waffle recipes, even AIP "peanut" butter. It's nut-free, as tigernuts are tubers, not nuts as the name suggests.
• Carob-This is a love it or hate it ingredient that replaces cocoa powder but is slightly sweeter than actual chocolate. Carob is a true pantry staple that makes the rounds here on the blog. There's these chocolate chip cookies, tigernut and carob bars, and this carob pudding.
• Arrowroot starch-Although the green banana flour and and tigernut flours provide starch, I generally like the way arrowroot helps with texture in egg-free baking.
• Gelatin-I personally use grass-fed Vital Proteins Beef Gelatin.
• Baking soda-As soon as you add and mix this in, you will have a reaction occur that helps these cupcakes rise. Note, the rise effect only lasts about 20 minutes so be prepared to bake these once mixed.
• Salt-Crucial in enhancing flavors in recipes where there is no butter and especially to enhance sweet and savory flavors which is important in AIP baking since they tend to be less sweet/savory compared to traditional standard American diet counterparts.
• Freeze dried beet powder-This is optional and provides some color as well as nutrients (beet powder link here). It does not impact the flavor much. This is a similar idea to adding strawberry powder to frosting in my strawberry cupcake recipe.

Now, for the wet ingredients:

• Bananas-In egg-free baking, bananas help bind and keep cupcakes moist, as well as provide a whole foods sweetener. For best results, be sure to blend your banana so that it is very smooth.
• Coconut oil-When in doubt, coconut oil (refined or unrefined) should be treated as you would butter. That is, it should be soft. I like to melt half of my coconut oil, then to my measuring cup, add the remaining solid coconut oil to achieve the perfect texture and measurement.
• Maple syrup-Unparalleled in AIP baking for flavor in baking recipes.
• Vanilla extract-Pure, gluten-free vanilla extract.
• Apple Cider vinegar-Provides acid so that the baking soda gets activated and helps these cupcakes rise.

And the frosting (everybody's favorite part):

• Palm shortening-This fat tends to be solid at room temperature and so it holds up well when mixed with liquids for frostings.
• Maple syrup-Provides the best flavor profile compared to honey.
• Coconut butter-Provides a savory, rich shortbread-like flavor that is reminiscent of actual butter and gives the frosting some dimension and aids in a creamy texture.
• Vanilla extract or vanilla powder-Simply adds enough flavor to over-power and "taste" that you might not love about palm shortening.
• Plain coconut yogurt (optional)-This ingredients is meant to mimic a cream cheese type frosting but I think the frosting tastes really good even without it. I like Cocojune.

AIP Cupcake Batter Texture

Although time consuming, I try to document the process of my bakes for you so you can visualize the steps. As you can see below, the batter is thick and difficult to mix. You can see that I did not mash my banana enough and have included in the instructions a recommendation to blend the wet ingredients for this reason.

This is a solid cupcake recipe, but the world will never know if you don't comment or rate the recipe. Please leave a star rating and any notes about your experience. Thank you for being here!

If you are interested in supporting the blog, you can follow any links to my affiliate amazon recommendations. These tulip cupcake liners are what you see pictured, and they really help AIP cupcakes rise and look amazing.

Appearance Note: I just wanted to add a note that my photos are of a tested version where I only added 1 teaspoon of beet powder. In the recipe, I call for 2 teaspoons so the red color comes through.