Neapolitan Cupcakes – Vanilla Cupcakes with Neapolitan Buttercream

Neapolitan cupcakes are the perfect recreation of the classic childhood flavour. These cupcakes are a vanilla cupcake base topped with a vanilla, chocolate and strawberry swirl buttercream. Perfectly fluffy, delicious and creamy!

Neapolitan Cupcakes by Wayne Thiebaud

Last week, on my Instagram, I was participating in a food photography challenge by food blogger Kimberly AKA The Little Plantation. One of the themes was to take inspiration from the artist Wayne Thiebaud. I ended up recreating his Neapolitan Cupcake painting, but instead, I added a fourth cupcake with a true Neapolitan design. I loved that they turned out rustic and most importantly delicious!

Though they were good, I thought they could be better in terms of taste and visuals. That’s when I got the inspiration to create a Neapolitan buttercream swirl instead. They turned out super cute and I am really happy with the taste as well!

Vanilla Cupcakes

These Neapolitan cupcakes are really a Neapolitan buttercream on top of a simple vanilla cupcake. I chose to make the base vanilla because I did not want the flavours to be overpowering. Vanilla always compliments other flavours and in this recipe particularly, I felt that it helped tone down the sweetness of the cupcake.

These vanilla cupcakes come together super easily and take less than 10 min to prep. Start by creaming the butter with sugar. Then cream it with eggs until nice and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and my favourite ingredient – Greek yogurt! A little bit of yogurt in these cupcakes keeps it nice and moist, and you won’t taste it at all!

Finally, add all your dry ingredients and milk at the same time and mix on low until just combined. You do not want to overmix this batter. See? Super easy and can be done with a whisk and bowl or in a stand mixer! Transfer to a muffin pan with greased liners and use a cookie scoop to make an easy transfer. Do not overfill these cupcakes as they will rise around 30%. I always fill mine 3/4 full, so they have a rounded top. If you like a more flat cupcake, fill the cupcakes with slightly less batter.

Bake at 350° Fahrenheit for 20-35 minutes until they have a light golden brown edge and a toothpick comes out of the centre easily. Cool these cupcakes completely before decorating. You do not want the frosting to melt! You can make your buttercream frosting while the cupcakes cool.

Cupcake Substitutions

Sugar: I chose not to use brown sugar to keep the colour cupcake more neutral. However, if you don’t care too much about the colour, you can add a mix of brown sugar.

Vanilla Extract: As these are vanilla cupcakes, you do want to add quality vanilla extract. Don’t use the artificial kind! If you have vanilla bean paste, even better, use that but decrease it by 1.5 Tsp.

Greek Yogurt: I actually used coconut greek yogurt (from Liberte) because that’s all I had in the fridge. Trust me you won’t taste the coconut flavour! I would recommend you stick to something neutral like plain, vanilla or coconut flavour. If you don’t have greek yogurt, substitute it with sour cream.

Neapolitan Buttercream

The easiest way to make the buttercream is by making a large batch of vanilla buttercream, dividing it into 3 portions, and then flavouring the two portions. You can make it individually, but it is more time-consuming and results in more dishes – which is no fun for me!

Start by making your vanilla buttercream base. Cream the butter first before adding the powdered sugar. I like to cream the butter initially so it gets nice and fluffy. If you cream it with the powdered sugar alone, it takes a bit longer and I find it becomes slightly lumpy. Add the vanilla extract, a pinch of salt and then the powdered sugar. Add the sugar in thirds to adjust to your sweetness. I found 4 cups work perfectly for 1 1/2 cup of butter. Then divide the buttercream into thirds.

Strawberry Buttercream

To make the strawberry buttercream, I simply added 1 tbsp of strawberry greek yogurt to 1/3 of the vanilla buttercream. If you add more too much yogurt, the batter can become quite lumpy and runny. 1 tbsp was enough to add good strawberry flavour. The strawberry yogurt lightly colours these pale pink, but I wanted these vibrant pink so I added gel food colouring. This is totally optional!

You can also substitute strawberry yogurt with pureed strawberries or freeze-dried strawberries. I honestly did not feel like leaving my house to get these, and freeze-dried strawberries can be quite expensive!

Chocolate Buttercream

To make the chocolate buttercream, add 2-3 tbsp of cocoa powder to 1/3 of the vanilla buttercream. I added the full 3 tbsp cause I wanted these dark and rich. Because you are adding cocoa powder which is a dry ingredient, you will need some milk to thin this out slightly. Slowly add a splash, working up to 1- 2tbsp of milk, or until your desired consistency.

When you lift the buttercream it should be thick enough to hold a slight curl. If the cream is too thick, it will almost look airy and curdled. Add more milk to thin it out. If the buttercream is too thin, it will drip when you pick up the cream.

Decorating your Neapolitan Cupcakes

My favourite part of making cupcakes is decorating them! The trick to getting this tri-coloured Neapolitan swirl is transferring each buttercream into its own piping bag. Tie the three piping bags together and place them in a larger piping bag with a fitted large star tip. I like to use Wilton’s 6B for this.

When you place the three piping bags into the larger one, ensure that each bag has an equal distance to the tip. Otherwise, one buttercream will be more dominant than the other. Also don’t cut each piping bag tip too large, otherwise, there won’t be enough room for all three to pipe out at the same time.

Practice swirling on a plate before piping on the cupcakes. If you’re happy with the colour placement, start piping the cupcakes! Start on the outer edge, leaving a slight edge. Pipe in a circle, layering on top, till you reach the middle. Repeat for the rest! You can also pipe with each flavour if you want plain vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry.