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Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting

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These vegan pumpkin muffins are rich, moist, and packed with spices. Top them off with rich cashew cream cheese frosting for an indulgent fall treat!

Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting with a Striped Napkin

I know, I know. SO much pumpkin is happening on the blog this year. And I’m not done yet. To say I’m excited about fall would be a bit of an understatement.

I’ve seriously been accumulating a list of fall recipes since, like, about the time the first buds started sprouting on the trees in March.

This particular recipe is one that I first posted back in the early days of this blog and have been meaning to update for a while now. Pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting are a favorite, so this was one recipe I was quite happy to work on this year.

In addition to giving the photos a makeover, I tweaked the recipe a bit. The original muffins were a bit on the smallish side. I don’t get to eat pumpkin muffins that often, and I like ’em big when I do. If you made the original version and were happy with the size, just cut down on the recipe by a third, or make 18 muffins instead of 12, and cut the bake time down to 16 to 18 minutes.

Hand Reaching for a Vegan Pumpkin Muffin on a Table

The other issue was the frosting. Cashew cream cheese frosting was a new thing to me back then, and it turned out as more of a glaze. Since first making these muffins I’ve made a few batches of cashew cream cheese frosting for doughnuts and carrot cake, among other things. The new version is much thicker and creamier, but if you were in love with the old frosting just scroll down to the bottom of the recipe — I’ve included it in the notes.

To make these muffins, start by mixing all of your dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then combine the two. Stir just until everything is mixed — don’t overdo it.

Collage Showing Steps for Making Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting: Mix Wet and Dry Ingredients Separately, Combine the Two, and Stir Just Until Blended

Drop the batter into paper-lined muffin cups and bake for about 25 minutes.

Vegan Pumpkin Muffins in a Tin Just Out of the Oven

Make the frosting while the muffins bake. Preferably soak your cashews in water for 4 to 8 hours, then blend them up in the food processor with some maple syrup, lemon juice, and vanilla. Give it a taste — it should be creamy, delicious and just sweet enough.

Food Processor Bowl Filled With Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting Just After Blending

The muffins cool before loading them up with frosting.

Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting with Teacup, Spoon and Napkin in the Background

Tips for Making Perfect Vegan Pumpkin Muffins

  • Don’t overmix the batter. Doing so can overwork the gluten in the flour as well as causing your baking soda and powder to fizzle out prematurely. This is important any time you’re making muffins.
  • These muffins will keep at room temperature in a sealed bag for about 3 days, and the frosting will keep in the fridge for about 3 days.
  • You can also freeze the frosting and the muffins separately.
  • Stir-ins like nuts and chocolate chips work great with these muffins.
  • Did you forget to soak your cashews? Boiling them for 15 minutes works in a pinch, although soaking usually yields the best results for me.
  • You can also freeze soaked cashews for later. Just leave them in their soaking water and seal them up in a freezer-friendly storage container. Then thaw by placing the container in a hot water bath or microwaving for a few minutes. I like to keep a stash in the freezer at all times for recipes like this.

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Vegan Pumpkin Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting with a Striped Napkin
4.8 from 5 votes
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Vegan Pumpkin Muffins Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting

These vegan pumpkin muffins are rich, moist, and packed with spices. Top them off with rich cashew cream cheese frosting for an indulgent fall treat!

Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword baking, fall, pumpkin
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Soak time 4 hours
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 12
Calories 287 kcal
Author Alissa

Ingredients

For the Muffins

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat pastry flour
  • 3/4 cup organic granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin puree
  • 3/4 cup unflavored soy or almond milk
  • 1/3 cup canola oil, or your favorite baking oil
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the Frosting

  • 1 1/2 cups raw cashews, soaked in water 4-8 hours
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 2-4 tablespoons unflavored and unsweetened non-dairy milk
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

To Make the Muffins

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°.

  2. Line 12 muffin cups with papers.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt.
  4. In a separate, smaller bowl, stir together pumpkin puree, milk, oil and vanilla.

  5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until blended.

  6. Divide the mixture among the muffin cups.

  7. Bake for 23-25 minutes, or until the tops spring up when touched lightly.

  8. Transfer the muffins to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely.

To Make the Frosting

  1. While the muffins cool, place the cashews, maple syrup, 2 tablespoons of milk, lemon juice, vanilla and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with an s-blade.

  2. Blend until smooth, adding additional milk to thin the mixture to the desired consistency.

Frost the Muffins

  1. When the muffins are cool, remove them from the tins and spread with frosting. Optionally, garnish with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

  2. Serve.

Recipe Notes

This post was updated in 2018 to include a new (and improved) frosting recipe and to make larger muffins. If you prefer smaller muffins, cut down on the recipe by 1/3 (or make 18 muffins instead of 12) and only bake them for 16 to 18 minutes. The old frosting recipe called for 1 cup of soaked raw cashews, juice of 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 4 cups of powdered sugar and about 1/4 cup of non-dairy milk (as needed to get the right consistency).

Nutrition Facts
Vegan Pumpkin Muffins Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting
Amount Per Serving (1 muffin with frosting)
Calories 287 Calories from Fat 131
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 14.5g 22%
Saturated Fat 2.1g 11%
Sodium 342mg 14%
Potassium 201mg 6%
Total Carbohydrates 36.7g 12%
Dietary Fiber 1.7g 7%
Sugars 18g
Protein 4.5g 9%
Calcium 7%
Iron 11%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  9. I used King Arthur Flour’s GF all purpose baking mix for the gf version. They came out great! I also substituted 1tbsp of maple syrup for the nondairy milk in the frosting. Win Win!

    Reply

    • Yay! I’m so glad you enjoyed them. Thanks for sharing and for letting me know the gluten free mix worked! I get questions all the time of gluten free subs and it’s good to have a blend to recommend that I know works with a particular recipe.

      Reply

  10. Hi! These muffins sound amazing. Is there a delicious vegan alternative for white powdered sugar that i can use for this recipe?

    Reply

  11. The recipe states “…stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt. In a seperate bowl, stir together pumpkin puree, mlk, oil and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir untli blended.” My question is, does the sugar go in with the dry or with the wet ingredients? These look AMAZING and I can’t wait to make them!!

    Reply

  13. When it comes to Pumpkin, I am all about fresh baked puree. Would you still recommend just the 1 cup? Canned puree is packed so tight, wasn’t sure if I needed to increase the amount.

    Reply

  16. How does one make larger batches of these baked items? I do food events for 20-75 pple and screwed up vegan corn bread by multiplying recipe x 4. It came out dry.

    On Oct 18th, I am making snacks for 25 pple at an HSUS legislative forum at the Conway Area Humane Society and need recipes for making veg baked goods for 25. Any suggestions. Want to WOW THEM!!

    Reply

    • I could see how cornbread might be easy to mess up, especially if you made one larger loaf instead of multiplying the number of loaves, which could result in uneven baking.

      Things like muffins are cookies should be easier to make in large batches, as the size of each cookie or muffin stays the same when you increase the batch size. It’s also possible you forgot to multiply one of the ingredients or over-multiplied something – I’ve done that myself a bunch of times, and the best way to avoid it is just being careful or writing down the amount as multiplied before getting started.

      I hope that helps – best of luck!

      Reply

    • Hi Cass! I analyzed the recipe on this page, and the muffins alone have 7.2 grams of fat and 18.5 grams of carbs per serving. With the frosting it would totally depend on how much you use (the recipe makes more than needed for a dozen muffins), but with cashews and powdered sugar I wouldn’t expect it to be low in carbs or fat. I hope that helps!

      Reply

  20. How are they without the icing?
    I’m not a big fan of extra sweet stuff and most of the pumpkin desert out there are just loaded with sweeteners.
    This one looks really good and i really like to low amount of sugar in them.

    Reply

    • I’m sure they’d be good without the icing, and if you’re not into stuff that’s too sweet, I’d definitely say skip it. They were very moist and flavorful, so I’m sure they’d be good on their own. :)

      Reply


  21. Oh dear. Mine went soooo wrong. I used baked pumpkin and I think it was too wet. They imploded as soon as they came out of the oven. And I didn’t soak the cashews long enough so the icing was a miserable failure too… They were like sad little tubs of collapsed goo topped with a lumpy coulis of failure.

    I will try again though! And this time I will find canned pumpkin from somewhere so as to avoid any mishaps, and I will soak my nuts adequately. I’m still going to rate the recipe 4 stars because I could still tell from the sad goo and sauce disaster that it has great potential.

    Love your blog btw. Super excited to make the coconut bacon as soon as I can find liquid smoke!

    Reply

    • On no! I’m sorry they didn’t work out and I hope you give them another try! One thing I can say is that if you forget to start soaking your cashews early enough in advance, you should be able to accelerate the process by using hot water. I haven’t tried this myself, but I know a bunch of people swear by it. :)

      Reply

  22. I made these with the “sub all purpose” option for the flour and they came out mushy. I even baked them longer to see if they’d firm up a little bit. When you say “sub all purpose”, do you mean regular all purpose flour? Could I have used plain whole wheat flour instead of the whole wheat pastry flour?

    Aside from the consistency, they were tasty. I was pleasantly surprised to find a muffin recipe that wasn’t off the charts in the sweetness category.

    I didn’t make the frosting, so I can’t comment on that.

    Reply

      • Thanks for the update! Glad to hear they worked out in the end. Also, good to know that they need to cool completely – I had to let mine cool so I could frost them, but I went ahead and updated the recipe to add a cooling step, just in case anyone else doesn’t make the frosting and is anxious as well. I appreciate the feedback! :)

        Reply

  23. Haha I also accumulate recipe,mostly seasonal, which I wasn’t able to do on time :) I’m also a Winter person,so I know what you mean! Even though Fall feels a bit like a beautiful Christmas Eve to me! I just can’t wait to start wearing my scarves, thick socks and just sit on the couch with hot tea!
    And your muffins look simply amazing!

    Reply

    • Oh my gosh, this year I accumulated so many fall and winter dishes! I’ve got a huge backlog of stews and curries that I made throughout the summer. Glad it’s not just me. :)

      Reply


  26. I’ve made my version of these countless times!!! I normally double the recipe and bake it in a 9×13 pan. I replace the oil with applesauce, add a flax egg, and about an additional 1/4th cup flour (white wheat flour is what I use). And I’ve never made the cream cheese icing. This recipe is delicious and thank you so much Alissa!!!

    Reply

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