Light, fluffy, homemade pumpkin cupcakes are topped with a swirl of creamy maple cinnamon Greek yogurt frosting. YUM. The best part? These cupcakes have zero sugar drama involved! They’re naturally gluten free, too, making them an ideal candidate for your holiday dessert menu.

Friends, meet the best skinny pumpkin cupcakes … and get ready to fall in love. 

Psst. Wanna know a little secret?

We’ve been scarfing down these rich, decadent little pumpkin cupcakes for breakfast every-single-day this week. Yesterday, I ate two… and all of the frosting off a third. No regrets.

Cupcakes… for breakfast (you say)? Have you gone MAD (you reasonably ask)? The answer is that we have not. We just came up with a killer cupcake recipe that’s good enough for dessert, but also great for breakfast.

Lemme guess… You want to know more? I can’t blame you.

The base of these epic little cupcakes is a soft, fluffy, pumpkin cake. And it’s cake; not muffin. I made sure of that while recipe testing. I wanted you to have a pillowy little pumpkin treat to sink your teeth into this Fall, and oh boy do these cakes deliver. The batter is made with ALL oat flour (be sure to double check your oats are gluten free if desired), pumpkin (obviously), maple syrup, orange juice, spices, and a hearty slip of molasses. It’s fantastic, really.

It bakes up into the dreamiest little cupcakes…

But what is a cupcake without frosting?

To make the frosting I use full-fat (FULL-FAT, pwease!!!) cream cheese, Greek yogurt (again… Full-Fatty Fat FAT, mmmk?), maple syrup, and a pinch of cinnamon.

Now. For the person who’s out there (I know you’re out there…) and is getting ready to leave a snarky comment like “UM. HOW ARE THESE SKINNY IF YOU WANT ME TO USE FULL-FAT CREAM CHEESE???”. Well. Let’s talk about that, friend. The title here is The Best Skinny Pumpkin Cupcakes. CUPCAKES. Skinnified. To me, losing the flour, sugar, and butter, and still making a cupcake that tastes, looks, and TASTES like a cupcake means it’s a win. You may go ahead and try to use non-fat dairy products, but I promise you the results won’t be as dreamy. Trust me, I’ve spent the money trying out all of the ways so you don’t have to 😉 Why? Cause I love you, man.

Moving forward…

Two final important words of advice:

1) These cupcakes should be completely cooled before frosting. Like COMPLETELY. The frosting has no powdered sugar (which acts as a stiffener), so it’s much softer and temperamental. If your cupcakes have any heat left in them, the frosting will slide off and make a mess everywhere. And that would just stink, right?

2) Refrigerate the frosting until you’re ready to pipe it on the cupcakes. Since it’s soft, it won’t get rock hard like other icings would in the refrigerator. I also recommend you frost these cupcakes as close to serving as possible. You can frost them and store them in the refrigerator BUT the cupcakes will become more dense in doing this. If you plan to make them ahead of time and store them in the fridge, just bring them to room temperature like 15 minutes before serving.

Enjoy! xoxo