Air Fryer Cupcakes

Do you want to make cupcakes in the air fryer? Well, let me introduce you to the best ever air fryer cupcakes and our ultimate cupcake guide.

Easy to mix and match for different seasonings and featuring amazing homemade buttercream, piping tips and so much more.

This air fryer cupcakes recipe was originally shared with you back in 2016. We have since updated air fryers, gone to cupcake classes and created an even better recipe for you.

My Cupcake Class

A few months back I went to a fantastic 1:1 cupcake class. Married to a chef, Dominic had always done any piping for me, and I had never really learnt it on my own.

I was always confused over what supplies to buy, if my buttercream would be good enough and how to do the pretty colours and the different cupcake designs that you see.

Well, through a local meet up for ladies in business I met the wonderful Saskia who runs her own bakery classes, with mainly kids and a few adults that she teaches at various classes.

I asked her for a 1:1 and became her first 1:1 cupcake decorating student.

She gave me a crash course in cupcake decorating, bought me the correct nozzles and piping bags and made me see that making buttercream and then piping it onto cupcakes was easy peasy.

Here is what i made at the cupcake class:

My kids now go to her kids group sessions on a Tuesday night, and I sit in between them and love every moment of Saskia’s amazing baking knowledge.

Cupcakes In Air Fryer

Today, I am going to go into great detail about making cupcakes in the air fryer. What went wrong, so that you don’t make the same mistakes, along with top cupcake making tips that Saskia taught me.

Note Saskia is the best person I know at making cupcakes and even sells them in the local community.

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Can You Cook Cupcakes In Air Fryer?

Yes, you sure can. The air fryer is fantastic for cupcakes.

You can make some vanilla cupcake mix, then use the air fryer to cook the cupcakes.

The only disadvantage is that the air fryer can’t hold a lot of cupcakes at once (unlike the oven) so you will be doing them in several batches.

Though there is also a lot of variations you can do. Therefore, if you have a favourite chocolate cupcake mix then you can use that and then just use our time and temps.

Can You Make Cupcakes In Ninja Foodi?

Yes, you can and we also made a batch in the Ninja Foodi. Like I mentioned above, there is only so much space in the Philips Air Fryer so we did a batch in the Philips, one batch in the Ninja and a third batch in the Cosori.

Can I Use Silicone Muffin Cups In Air Fryer?

Yes, you can, and this is what I use in my air fryer egg cups and also in many other air fryer recipes. It’s a favourite of mine and I always have a drawer full of them.

But I find for air fryer cupcakes that I would much rather use paper liners.

Can You Use Paper Cupcake Liners In An Air Fryer?

Yes, you can and that is what I recommend in this air fryer cupcakes recipe. BUT you will need something for those paper cases to sit on.

I bought these cute containers for small desserts and for Yorkshire puddings in the air fryer and they are perfect for sitting the cupcake liners on:

And then the cupcake liners will not fall over and get the air sucked out of them as they air fry.

Can You Use A Cake Recipe To Make Cupcakes?

Yes, you can and it’s a great way to use up leftover cake mix after you have been baking some cakes.

I would recommend the most our air fryer chocolate cake or round lemon drizzle cake for this.

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Air Fryer Cupcakes Recipe Ingredients

Buttercream – You will want a batch of buttercream that you can load into your piping bag for the top of the cupcakes. What we did was make a batch of our Thermomix buttercream and then left it in the fridge until just before we needed to pipe it. For making buttercream the main ingredients are double icing sugar to butter quantity. Plus, a little milk and vanilla essence.

Mix – Before adding the buttercream we need to make vanilla cupcake mix that we can then air fry. What’s easy about the vanilla cupcakes is that its equal quantities of butter, sugar, and flour and then a little vanilla and some eggs.

Colouring – You may also want some food colouring to make your cupcakes more special. Such as green for St Paddy’s Day, or red and pink for Valentine’s Day.

Accessories – Then for accessories you will need your nozzles, a piping bag, a drinking glass, a pair of scissors and a peg. Don’t worry I will explain this in more detail further down.

Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in this cupcake air fryer recipe it has just been our Cosori air fryer. We have this one and its wonderful for many types of air fryer recipes.

We also used our Thermomix for quickly and easily making the cupcake mix and for making the buttercream.

Plus, we recommend you head over to our air fryer recipes category as we have more than 500 tried and tested air fryer recipes and have been air frying for 10 years.

How To Make Cupcakes In Air Fryer?

• Mix. Start by making your air fryer vanilla cupcakes with your stand mixer (we used our Thermomix). Mix butter and sugar until light and creamy. Then gradually add vanilla paste and eggs. Finally add in flour and mix well.  
• Cook. Load the batter into paper liners and then place paper liners into suitable containers. Air fry for 12 minutes at 160c/320f and then allow to completely cool.
• Prep. Next make your buttercream by adding butter, then double the quantity in icing sugar and then a little milk and vanilla.
• Colour. If you want coloured buttercream i.e. we did red roses then add the colour now, or separate the buttercream into bowls for multiple colours.
• Pipe. Next pipe the buttercream over the cupcakes before serving.

And I am sure you can see now how easy it is cooking cupcakes in air fryer and how you can be doing the same.

How Long Do You Cook Cupcakes?

The air fryer cupcakes time is JUST 12 minutes. I love how fast you can make cupcakes in the air fryer and recommend you make them in the morning, then once cool you can do the piping in the afternoon.

The air fryer cupcakes temperature is 160c/320f. This is because you don’t want your cupcakes to burn on top and its very easy for that to happen with the way food cooks in an air fryer.

How To Pipe Your Cupcakes?

Then once you have followed our buttercream recipe, you will want to prepare the buttercream and pipe it on your cold cupcakes.

This is a really easy process and once you have done this once you can rinse and repeat.

Start by loading a piping bag over a glass with the nozzle already in the bottom. Then feed in all your buttercream.

Then remove from the glass and tightly twist around and use a peg to hold in place. Then use the scissors to chop about 1.5 cm off the bottom so that the buttercream can get out.

Then hold your piping bag in place as you pipe the buttercream over the cupcakes.

Then for the essential accessories you need for making cupcakes in the air fryer I have highlighted them below:

• Piping Bags
• Set Of Nozzles
• Scissors
• Drinking Glass
• A Peg

And I have bolded them above so you can imagine when you need each of them.

What About Rainbow Cupcakes?

You just have an extra step if you want to do multiple colour cupcakes.

Simply mix your colours in different small containers to create different colour pots.

Then lay out a strip of cling film.

Then roll it up like a fat sausage as tight as you can.

Then cut the end off and lower into your piping bag.

You then pipe as normal, and those beautiful colours will come through to your cupcake.

Air Fryer Cupcake Mistakes

As you can imagine there is a few mistakes you can make when baking cupcakes in the air fryer and wanted to run through with you the BIGGEST ones.

Mistake #1 over filling the paper cases

In the first batch we made, we added too much cupcake batter and it resulted in some of them spilling out and not looking like classic cupcakes at all.

Instead, you need to fill them to ¼ full only.

Mistake #2 leaving out your buttercream for too long

It was a very hot day when we made our cupcakes and the buttercream ended up melting too much. We simply loaded it in the fridge to get the temperature back down and it was fine.

Mistake #3 not freezing your leftovers

You can freeze leftover cupcakes in their liners and you can also freeze spare buttercream.

What we did was use up loads of old buttercream we had previously made in the freezer and used this. It meant we only needed to make a small batch of buttercream in testing these recipes.

Listen To Air Fryer Cupcakes

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More Air Fryer Baking

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• Air Fryer Doughnuts
• Air Fryer Sponge Cake

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