Sweet Potato Cupcakes With Salted Caramel Buttercream

Sweet potato might not be an obvious cupcake ingredient but it makes these sweet potato cupcakes beautifully moist and sweet. Topped with a rich salted caramel buttercream, they’re perfect for “cosy season” afternoons, autumn baking or even Halloween parties.

· Updated 2026 ·

The recipe is an adaptation of Mich Turner’s sweet potato cake from Mich Turner’s Cake School, baked as individual cupcakes. I also simplified the frosting by using jarred salted caramel sauce instead of making toffee sauce from scratch.

The result is soft, warmly spiced and utterly indulgent – if you love caramel and chocolate, you’ll want to make them again and again.

Baking Sweet Potato Cupcakes: Tips & Tricks

Sweet potatoes aren’t just for roasting as a side vegetable or blending in soups; in baking they bring natural sweetness, moisture and tender crumb texture. Unlike pumpkin or squash, they also lend a subtle caramel flavour that pairs nicely with warm spices such as cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg.

Their characteristic sweetness, even as a vegetable, makes sweet potatoes a perfect vegetable ingredient to bake into cupcakes, muffins or traybakes. That soft golden cake texture, the warm sweet aroma from the oven as they bake, is a signature note for autumn baking days.

Sweet Potato Cupcakes: Baking and Decorating Tips

As the cupcakes bake relatively quickly, you’ll have a batch to enjoy in less than an hour. Whether you’re an experienced baker, or baking cupcakes for the first time, this batter is easy to mix. Here are some tips:

Sticky business: Possibly when roasting sweet potatoes, you’ve seen a caramelised liquid ooze out? Stop the sweet potato wedges from sticking to the baking tray by lining it with a sheet of baking parchment paper.

To Pipe or Not To Pipe: It’s easy piping swirls of buttercream, pile the mix into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle; it looks fantastic and the ridges will create crevices ideal for catching more sticky sauce. Equally, if you don’t want to faff with such things, slathering on fairly generous heaps of salted caramel buttercream using a table knife will get the job done.

Curl Up and Enjoy! Paired with a hot chocolate or cup of coffee, they’re the perfect autumn season sweet treat.

Storing Sweet Potato Cupcakes: When they’ve cooled and been decorated, the cupcakes will store in an airtight container for a couple of days. You might wish to bake the bases a day ahead of decorating them, that’s fine too. The sweet potato cupcakes also freeze for up to a month, making them a great make-ahead batch baking option for parties – or if you want a sweet snack on hand for when friends pop by.

For a lighter, easier option: Skip the buttercream and spread the tops with low-fat cream cheese. This will also reduce the sugar, because the bases are sweet enough already! Another – more calorific – option would be to spread the bases with Nutella.

Go glam: The buttercream swirls already make the cupcakes look fancy but you can get creative adding something extra. Put on extra glitz with gold coloured cake baubles or even edible gold leaf; or go the other direction with a rustic sprinkling of cocoa dust.

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Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream

Adapted from Mich Turner's Sweet Potato Cake from Mich Turner's Cake School. Minor amendments on the original version are noted below. Makes enough batter for 18+ large cupcakes or one 23cm (9inch) ring mould cake (sprayed with non-stick baking spray)

Oven temperature: 313f / 160c / gas 2-3.

Course: Baking, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: home baking, salted caramel buttercream, sweet potato cupcakes

Servings: 18 cupcakes

Equipment

• 1 piping bag with large star nozzle. - if you wish to pipe swirls, if not just paste the buttercream on with a table knife.

Ingredients

• 850 g sweet potatoes
• 400 g light brown sugar
• 225 ml sunflower oil
• 4 large eggs
• 290 g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon ground
• 3 teaspoons ginger ground
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

for the buttercream:

• 250 g butter softened
• 500 g icing sugar sifted
• 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste
• 4 tbsp salt caramel sauce from a jar - plus extra to streak inside the piping bag (Mich's recipe refers to a separate recipe in the book for a toffee sauce)
• 75 g crystallized stem ginger chopped (I replaced this with grated dark chocolate)

Instructions

• Place the potatoes in a baking dish and bake in the oven for 45–60 minutes, depending on their size, until tender (a knife should insert easily through the potato when it is cooked). Remove the potatoes from the oven and leave to cool before peeling and mashing the sweet potato flesh.
• Place the sweet potato flesh in a large bowl and add the sugar and oil. Use an electric hand-held whisk to beat until smooth. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition.
• In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, raising agents, salt and spices. Stir into the wet ingredients and mix until just combined but no lumps remain. Stir in the vanilla.

For cupcakes:

• Spoon the batter into 12 hole muffin tins lined with paper cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until springy on top and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool slightly in the tin for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• If making a large cake:
• Transfer the cake batter to the prepared tin and bake for 60–65 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire cooling rack. Run a small knife around the edge of the cake tin and leave to cool for 15 minutes before turning our and leaving to cool completely. Transfer the cooled cake to a serving plate or cake stand.

For the icing:

• Stir 4 tablespoons of caramel sauce into the buttercream in a bowl. For cupcakes, streak another tablespoon of caramel sauce down the side of a large disposable piping bag and fill the bag two thirds full with the caramel buttercream. Pipe spiral swirls onto the cooled cupcakes and grate dark chocolate over the tops and serve. If making the large cake, spread the toffee buttercream over the top and sides of the cake with a palette knife. Decorate around the base of the cake with the crystallised ginger and drizzle the remaining toffee sauce over the cake.

Notes

Storage: Keep in an airtight container at room temperature and eat within 3 days.

Soft, spiced, and topped with salted caramel buttercream, these sweet potato cupcakes are perfect to bake and enjoy this autumn! Pin this sweet potato cupcakes recipe for later!

For another sweet potato cake take a look at Sweet Potato Pecan Cake – a delicious loaf cake recipe.

Recipe reproduced with permission from Jacqui Small / Quarto books who sent a review copy. I’m a big Mich Turner fan – read about when I met her at this Christmas Cupcake Class and also a cake decorating class at Little Venice Cake Company.