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I pumped 1 whole cup of Greek yogurt into these cupcakes and they are so fluffy and delicious I can hardly sit still. These cupcakes are just as quick to whip up as boxed cupcakes but they taste so much better!
I’ve spent the past few days developing (eating) and testing this yogurt cupcake recipe. It’s finally ready to be shared with the world. These are going into my cupcake hall of fame; among my top 4 (ok, you got me. Maybe I only have 4 cupcake recipes posted. Quality over quantity folks) ;).
Now lets talk about the easy and scrumptious blackberry frosting. On second thought, a picture is worth a thousand words. Let your eyes wander back to the top of the screen. Oh. Yeah ;).
*Makes 12 muffin-top cupcakes or 15 boring regular ones*
Cupcake Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups cake flour *measured correctly (click for a quick video on how to make cake flour!)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp (cut into 6-8 pieces)
1 large egg, room temp
1 large egg white, room temp
1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain Greek Yogurt (I used the regular, full fat version)
Frosting Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, soft at room temp
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
8 oz (1 stick) cream cheese, softened to room temp and cut into 8 pieces
1/2 cup (about 15) Blackberries to puree + 12 blackberries for garnish
How to make Greek Yogurt Cupcakes:
Line a 12-count cupcake pan with paper liners. Preheat Oven to 350˚F.
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together your dry ingredients: 1 2/3 cups cake flour, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt until well combined. Add in 6 Tbsp softened butter and with your wire whisk on med/low speed, mix for about 3-4 min or until fine crumbs form.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together your wet ingredients until combined: 1 egg, 1 large egg white, 1 cup plain greek yogurt and 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk together on med speed until smooth (2 min). The batter will be thick and still have tiny lumps. Fill each paper liner a little more than 1/2 full if you want 15 regular cupcakes. Fill 2/3 full if you want 12 cupcakes with muffin tops like what you see in the pictures.
Bake at 350˚F for 18-20 minutes. When finished, a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake should come out clean. Remove cupcakes to a wire rack and let cool to room temp.
How to Make Blackberry Frosting:
1. Puree blackberries in a small food processor, or Immersion Hand Blender, then strain them through a fine mesh Strainer
, pushing them through with a spatula until all you have left in the strainer is seeds. Discard seeds and set the puree aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, mix the 1 stick of softened butter with 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and salt on low speed or until combined, scraping as necessary ~ 2 min. Don’t start on high speed or you will be surrounded in a cloud of powdered sugar (lessons learned).
It may seem like it won’t come together at first, but it will. Give it a little time ;). Once the mixture is combined, increase speed to medium-high and beat until the cream is pale and fluffy (2-3 min)
3. Add cream cheese 1-piece at a time and mix until combined. Once all of the cream cheese is mixed in, continue to beat 2 more minutes until fluffy, scraping down the bowl as necessary. You need your frosting to be super smooth without any globs of cream cheese or they will get stuck in the piping star, so if you see globs, keep mixing.
Next, pour in your blackberry puree and continue mixing until well incorporated. Refrigerate frosting 10 minutes before piping it onto the cupcakes.
How to Decorate the Blackberry Cupcakes:
1. Once your cupcakes are cooled to room temp, you can decorate them. I used a WILTON 2D (closed-star) frosting tip with a piping bag to frost the tops working from the outside in and up. There’s enough frosting to be generous with each cupcake. You’re welcome ;).
Top with a fresh blackberry if desired and serve. They refrigerate really well and stay fluffy even right out of the fridge.
Greek Yogurt Cupcakes with Blackberry Frosting

Ingredients
Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1 2/3 cups cake flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp (cut into 6-8 pieces)
- 1 large egg, room temp
- 1 large egg white, room temp
- 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup plain Greek Yogurt, I used the regular, full fat version
Frosting Ingredients:
- 1 stick unsalted butter, soft at room temp
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
- 8 oz 1 stick cream cheese, softened to room temp and cut into 8 pieces
- 1/2 cup about 15 Blackberries to puree + 12 blackberries for garnish
Instructions
How to make the Cupcakes:
- Line a 12-count cupcake pan with paper liners. Preheat Oven to 350˚F.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together your dry ingredients: 1 2/3 cups cake flour, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt until well combined. Add in 6 Tbsp softened butter and with your wire whisk on med/low speed, mix for about 3-4 min or until fine crumbs form.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together your wet ingredients until combined: 1 egg, 1 large egg white, 1 cup plain greek yogurt and 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk together on med speed until smooth (2 min). The batter will be thick and still have tiny lumps.
- Fill each paper liner a little more than 1/2 full if you want 15 regular cupcakes. Fill 2/3 full if you want 12 cupcakes with muffin tops like what you see in the pictures. Bake at 350˚F for 18-20 minutes. When finished, a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake should come out clean. Remove cupcakes to a wire rack and let cool to room temp.
How to Make Frosting:
- Puree blackberries in a small food processor, or Immersion Hand Blender, then strain them through a fine mesh strainer, pushing them through with a spatula until all you have left in the strainer is seeds. Discard seeds and set the puree aside.
- In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, mix the 1 stick of softened butter with 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and salt on low speed or until combined, scraping as necessary ~ 2 min. Don’t start on high speed or you will be surrounded in a cloud of powdered sugar (lessons learned). It may seem like it won't come together at first, but it will. Give it a little time ;). Once the mixture is combined, increase speed to medium-high and beat until the cream is pale and fluffy (2-3 min).
- Add cream cheese 1-piece at a time and mix until combined. Once all of the cream cheese is mixed in, continue to beat 2 more minutes until fluffy, scraping down the bowl as necessary. You need your frosting to be super smooth without any globs of cream cheese or they will get stuck in the piping star, so if you see globs, keep mixing.
- Pour blackberry puree over frosting and continue mixing until well incorporated. Refrigerate frosting 10 minutes before piping it onto the cupcakes.
How to Decorate the Blackberry Cupcakes:
- Once your cupcakes are cooled to room temp, you can decorate them. I used a WILTON 2D (closed-star) frosting tip with a piping bag to frost the tops working from the outside in and up. There's enough frosting to be generous with each cupcake. You're welcome ;). Top with a fresh blackberry if desired and serve.
Love you all and I know you’ll LOVE these cupcakes! Thanks in advance for sharing these goodies on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and everywhere else you frequent. Thank YOU in general for making this blog great. I’m living my dream because of you. Seriously, you are amazing friends!
-Natasha 🙂
Hi Natasha,
Would these work with strawberry Greek yogurt instead? And how about strawberries instead of blackberries in the frosting? Thanks!
You’ll want to use about the same amount of strawberries by volume and you don’t have to seed the strawberries since you can’t really feel their seeds in the frosting. Add strawberry puree to your desired consistency since strawberries tend to be a little juicier than blackberries. I haven’t tried with strawberry Greek yogurt, but I think it would be a fun experiment. Let me know if you try it 🙂
when it says cake flour does regular flour work too?
I haven’t tested it with all-purpose flour so I can’t say for sure, but some of my readers have tried with all-purpose flour with good results (search “all-purpose” in the comments section and you can see what they wrote) 🙂 Have a great weekend!
Hi Natasha,
I wanted to let you know that you can make your own cake flour using all-purpose flour. Just substitute 2 tablespoons corn starch in each cup of flour (so 14 T flour & 2 T corn starch) this tip is on the cornstarch container.
Thank you so much for sharing that Laura! Cake flour is a bit spendy and I’d rather be using my organic all-purpose flour 🙂
Thanks Natasha. Haven’t seen your blog before as I usually frequent allergy ones for my boys but decided to make cupcakes for me today!! I did them in the thermomix, used 2 eggs as hate separating (one of my boys is severely allergic), rapadura sugar, nuttelex (dairy allergies here so I never use butter these days!), added 2Tbl lemon juice and a few passionfruits and just plain flour as well. I also only had organic vanilla yogurt so that’s what I used. Absolutely delicious! The batter is divine and the finished cakes too! I used a normal muffin pan and mini muffin one for the best of both worlds… Ha ha! Thanks! Going to try and use this recipe to make them dairy and egg free and see how I go 🙂 thanks!
Thank you for sharing how you made them! I’m sure it will be helpful for others who might be looking for allergy subs. I do have an amazing chocolate cupcakes recipe that is egg free and dairy free (not the frosting though). I hope you love them! https://natashaskitchen.com/2013/01/23/moist-chocolate-cupcakes-with-prague-frosting/
I am having such a hard time with the frosting setting up. It is a much softer consistency than of yours. Should I add more of something? More butter or powdered sugar? Everything went pretty well until I added the cream cheese. :/
Did you follow the recipe exactly? It should have been pretty thick and spreadable after adding the cream cheese. Maybe you had a lot more blackberry syrup than me?
Natasha,
These were great! Even my hubby, who doesn’t really like cupcakes, loved them! 😉 I’ve already made them twice. Just one question: The second time I made these cupcakes, the cupcakes deflated, and I’m not sure why this happened. Did I over-mix or what do you think could be the cause?
Thanks 🙂
Can you think of anything else you could have done differently? Did you use all of the same ingredients? Overmixing probably would not have caused it.
Hi Natasha! I’m planning on making these on Friday for my sons bday on Sat…if I make these Fri, can I leave them out over night, or do they have to be refrigerated? Thanks! 🙂
They should be refrigerated since the frosting has dairy in it. 🙂 Happy birthday to your son! 🙂
These are the best!! but have you tried any of your recipes to replace sugar with applesauce or the flour with whole wheat flour? Do you think it would work for this recipe or would it be too watery?
Thank you, thank you :). I have used applesauce in my carrot cake, but not these, so I can’t really recommend it until I try it… I’m so glad you loved the cupcakes 🙂
🙁 I was so happy to have found these cupcakes, this is my 3rd batch FAIL! I don’t understand what’s going on, I followed the instructions precisely and ingredients. They raise half way through baking them the middle just sinks in :(( they seem to be very oily and soft not at all bready. I was making them for my daughters birthday tomorrow. It looks like there will be no dessert. ;(
Oh no, that’s so sad 🙁 I’ve never had them turn out oily or sunken. It’s hard to say what could have gone wrong without being there, but I’ll do my best to help. Did you possibly substitute any of the ingredients? Could you have switched the amounts of baking soda and baking powder? Did you use cake flour? Do you live in a high elevation area that would alter your baking time? Also, did you wait until your oven was fully pre-heated before putting the cupcakes in? I hope we can figure it out! In the mean time, if you need a quick dessert recipe, this vanilla cupcakes base https://natashaskitchen.com/2012/06/29/perfect-vanilla-cupcake-recipe/ or this chocolate cupcakes base: https://natashaskitchen.com/2013/01/23/moist-chocolate-cupcakes-with-prague-frosting/ are fairly easy to put together and are always a hit at parties. You might also consider the mixed berry trifle: https://natashaskitchen.com/2013/04/23/mixed-berry-and-angel-food-trifle-recipe/ it’s no-bake and is pretty quick to assemble.
I was just looking at some of your cupcake recipes and decided to read the comments. I love how fast you respond to your readers, only 2 hours for this ‘crisis’ comment! Keep up the great work 😉
I do my best to be quick about replying to comments; especially the crisis type comments. 🙂 Thanks Katy!
do you think I could use this cream to frost the outside of a tres leche cake…. purple is my daughters favorite color, its for her birthday party!!!!
I absolutely think you can! 🙂 That sounds delicious!
Natasha, how crucial is it to use cake flour as opposed to regular flour in this recipe? Thank you!
I haven’t tested it with all-purpose flour so I can’t really recommend it, but it probably would be ok. The cake flour makes cupcakes fluffier.
These look DELICIOUS! Your photos are great too!
Thelma, thank you for the compliment. I hope you love the cupcakes! 🙂
I would love to make these for Easter this weekend. Would nonfat greek yogurt still work as well?
Thanks!!
These are best with the real stuff. These don’t have very much fat in them otherwise. I definitely recommend the full-fat version.
Thank you very much!
Would frozen blackberries (thawed) work? Or do they have to be fresh?
I think either would work fine, but keep in mind that frozen berries tend to let off more juice so keep an eye on the consistency of the frosting as you add the juice so it doesn’t get too soft. Enjoy the cupcakes! They are quite a treat 🙂
Thank you for all the quick responses! I was not able to make it this past weekend because I couldn’t find any full fat greek yogurt at our local stores. But I won’t give up! I will make these!!! I am going to try the frosting for a lemon cake I made though. Would I be able to add whipping cream to it for a more whipped texture? Maybe fold it in after it’s whipped? What do you think?
Thanks again for all the phenomenal recipes!!!!
I think that should work, but it does have a good whipped texture even without it. I think this frosting would taste great over a lemon cake.
These were so scrumptious. I made these today and by the end of the day I had FOUR. We had guest over and was glad I made a double batch… Thank you thank you thank you for all the yummy recipes. Keep them coming.
Alla you’re so sweet. It was nice to catch up today; even if it was by text! I’m so glad you loved the cupcakes 🙂
May I ask if you must use “unsalted” butter? If I just leave out the salt, would regular butter be ok?
I always buy unsalted butter because it’s easier to add more salt if needed but impossible to take it away. A stick of salted butter has roughly the equivalent of 1/4 tsp salt. This recipe calls for 1/8 tsp salt so you’d have a saltier frosting with salted butter. I think it would still work but I do recommend unsalted butter for the recipe for best results. I don’t think it would make a strong difference in taste.
Thank you so much for this recipe! I used the base of your cake mixture to make the most delicious chai cupcakes. The greek yoghurt made them so incredibly fluffy. If you are interested check them out here: http://emmalovisaa.blogspot.com/2014/04/chai-spiced-cupcakes.html
Thanks again 🙂
Emma
I just did check yours out. They look amazing!!
Thank you so much 🙂 I couldn’t have made them without your base recipe!
You’re so welcome 🙂 Anytime 😉
Would the cream taste good if I used salted butter. I am out of unsalted butter 🙁
Good question! I think it would work but make sure you do not add the 1/8 tsp salt.
Your cupcakes look amazing, will have to try this recipe.
Natasha,
these turned out awesome even with our modifications – WW pastry flour, and swapped 1/3 c flour for cocoa.
Do you think they’ll freeze ok? How does one defrost cupcakes?
Oooh you made chocolate ones? Yum!!! Thanks so much for sharing that with me. I have never tried freezing cupcakes, but I imagine its probably like freezing cakes; let cool then wrap in plastic wrap and freeze. I haven’t tried with these cupcakes so I can’t guarantee they’ll be awesome defrosted. You defrost in the fridge or at room temp.
Hi Natasha, I’ve featured your cupcakes on my blog, hoping that you don’t mind, but if you do, please contact me and I’ll remove it. All the best.
Thank you for featuring it. No problem 🙂
Quick question. .I’m just a bit confused. .on the cupcake ingredients it says 1/2 tbsp Of vanilla but in the directions it says 1 tsp..so which is it? ? 🙂
Oh my, sorry about that! It’s 1/2 Tbsp. It wouldn’t have made a huge difference though since 1/2 Tbsp is 1 1/2 tsp. Thanks so much for bringing this to my attention. You’re awesome!