A sweet and simple recipe for adorable Gender Reveal Cupcakes! This recipe makes soft but sturdy vanilla cupcakes that you can fill with either pink or blue sprinkles for a fun gender reveal! Recipe includes a video tutorial!
Life lately has been hectic. Time is flying, I’m getting bigger every day (and so is baby!) and I can’t believe we have less than two months to go.
Zach and I found out the baby’s gender right after the ultrasound technician did. We were both dying to know and couldn’t even imagine waiting until the baby was born (those of you who have that kind of self-control and patience… I don’t know how you do it).
We didn’t do any kind of special gender reveal for friends or family, and we didn’t have a party. We called and texted family members on our way home from the appointment, so it was a pretty low-key sort of “reveal”.
Still, I’ve had this idea to make my piñata cupcakes into a gender reveal cupcakes for a while and couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a sweet gender reveal on the blog today.
Believe it or not (because I couldn’t believe it at first), we are having a…
BOY!
A sweet baby boy!
So many of you guessed that we would be having a girl, and I thought so too, honestly! Maybe it’s because my mom had 5 girls (and just one boy)? I’m not sure why, but I was certain we would be having a girl. Well evidently not!
Baby boy should be here before Thanksgiving and Zach and I are both so excited for his arrival.
There’s so much left to do before he gets here! We haven’t even bought a crib yet and the nursery is fairly… unassembled, for lack of a better word.
As for the blog, I’ll continue to post once he arrives but I’ve been working very hard to get ahead on recipes so that I can have a few posts scheduled out and take a little bit of a “maternity leave” when he’s born. It’s been fun, but also a little strange jumping into fall and winter recipes while it’s still summertime. I decorated Christmas cookies yesterday and it was 80 degrees (I’ll share them with you on Instagram later today)!
Gender Reveal Cupcakes
There are a lot of gender reveal cupcake ideas out there, but none that I felt were quite as fun as these (OK, I might be biased). These aren’t just fun, though, they’re also simple to make: just bake cupcakes, carve a hole in the center, and fill with sprinkles!
They might be a bit messier to bite into than some other frosting-filled or colored-cake-filled cupcakes out there, but that’s part of the fun of them. The sprinkles are a fun and colorful surprise, and the reveal is pretty unmistakable!
While I have quite a few existing cupcake recipes on the blog, I developed this one specifically for this recipe. I wanted a cupcake that was sturdier and denser than some of the others on my site, but still extremely soft, flavorful, and moist. Using egg whites that have been whipped to stiff peaks and sour cream helps make this tightly-crumbed but not at all dry cupcake possible.
This cupcake is perfect for carving into, which is exactly the point since we’ll be carving little nests into our cupcakes to hide our sprinkles (see photo above).
I topped these cupcakes off with my Swiss Meringue Buttercream from Monday, but included some of my other favorite frosting options in the recipe.
Thank you so much for letting me share the news about our baby boy with you. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones (probably not) but I’m just so, incredibly, overwhelmingly, grateful to every one of you reading today. Thanks for letting me share not just sweet recipes but these other sweet parts of my life 💙
More Cupcake Recipes You Might Like:
- Vanilla Cupcakes
- Funfetti Cupcakes
- Chocolate Cupcakes (these are very light and fluffy, probably too light to carve for Gender Reveal Cupcakes. If you’re looking for a chocolate cupcake variation I would recommend using my chocolate cake recipe instead and baking that as cupcakes).
- Carrot Cake Cupcakes
Let’s bake together! Follow me on my YouTube channel where I’ve already uploaded over 150 recipe videos that you can watch for free!
Gender Reveal Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 3 large egg whites, room temperature (½ cup or 122g), make sure there is not so much as a teeny tiny bit of yolk in with the egg whites or they will not whip properly.
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- ⅓ cup canola oil or vegetable oil (80ml)
- 1 cup sugar (200g)
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ cup sour cream (120g)
- 1 ⅓ cup + 1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour (172g)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup pink or blue sprinkles
- 1 batch Swiss Meringue Buttercream or preferred frosting recipe (see suggestions in notes for more of my favorite frosting recipes)
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and prepare a 12 count cupcake tin by lining with paper liners. Set aside.
- Place your egg whites in a completely clean, dry, and grease-free bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat on high-speed until stiff peaks form.¹ Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to beat together butter, oil, and sugar. Beat until ingredients are creamy and well-combined.
- Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and then stir in your vanilla extract and sour cream, stirring until combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Using a spatula and stirring by hand (don’t use your mixer or you run the risk of over-beating the batter), stir the dry ingredients into the wet (butter/sugar mixture) until completely combined. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure ingredients are well-combined. Set aside.
- Using a spatula, gently fold your egg whites into your batter. While you do not want to over-mix this batter, it is important that the egg whites are completely combined. Use a gentle hand and stir until you can’t see any streaks of egg whites in the batter.
- Divide batter evenly into prepared cupcake tin.
- Bake on 350F (175C) for 17-19 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean or with a few moist crumbs (no wet batter).
- Allow cupcakes to cool completely before carving and frosting:
Assembly
- Once cupcakes have cooled completely, use a small knife to cut a hole about 1” in diameter and 1” deep into a cupcake (do NOT cut all the way down to the bottom, you are making a little nest for your sprinkles). Try to make the top of the hole slightly larger than the bottom. Remove this core/plug piece of your cupcake and then slice off the bottom so that only the surface of your cupcake (about ¼” thick) remains (see photo in post or video below for visual). Save this piece with the cupcake that you cut it out of so you can easily match each piece when you go to fill your cupcakes. Repeat with all remaining cupcakes.
- Fill each cupcake cavity with sprinkles, filling just below the surface of each cupcake. Top with your cupcake plug that you reserved and gently press down.
- Top cupcakes with frosting.
- Feel free to use your favorite frosting with this recipe! I used my Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the cupcakes in these pictures (piped with an Ateco 848 tip) but will include more options below in the notes section.
Notes
MORE FROSTING OPTIONS:
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Natalie
Can I make this into a cake? Would the swiss meringue buttercream frosting still work?
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
Hi Natalie! We’d recommend our vanilla cake instead. And yes, you can absolutely use the swiss meringue 😊
Natasha Carlson
Please tell us where you got these adorable confetti sprinkles
Sam
Hi Natasha! I actually was able to find all of these at Walmart. I mixed together a couple of different kinds of blue. 🙂
Amy Wonder
can I use cake flour?
Sam
Yes you can substitute cake flour. 🙂
Sarah
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
As a new mother myself, I’m so happy for you! My little boy was just born in August, so I’m barely ahead of you in terms of figuring things out.
Some advice:
Everyone says it, and they’re not kidding: it goes so fast. What that means is that you have to slow down and go at your baby’s pace. You might wake up one morning with an unexpected burst of energy, thinking you’ll take the chance to get some project done, but then your baby will have other ideas. Sometimes you’ll end up spending all day in bed or on the couch because your baby needs your snuggles. Embrace it.
That being said, take advantage of the moments when someone else is holding the baby to take care of yourself. Take a shower. Eat some food. Breathe. It’s important to get those restorative moments to help you through the frustrating ones.
Also, if you’re planning on breastfeeding, the more you learn about it now, the better prepared you’ll be for how difficult it can be. I was warned that the first 6 weeks are the hardest, but I didn’t understand why until I went through it myself. It would have helped if I’d spent even a little time in advance learning about some of the most common challenges and remedies.
I’m full of advice, but I’m sure you’ve already gotten plenty of it over the past several months. Good luck! It’ll all be worth it!
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much for the advice, Sarah! I appreciate it. Congrats on your little one! 🙂
Brittini
Congratulations on the baby boy news! I have a 2yr old son and it is the greatest gift! He will be such a mama’s boy, I’m sure of it! Love the look of these cupcakes! We are expecting our 2nd and should know gender in December so I’ll have to try this out on my husband! Thanks for sharing (recipe and the sweet moments) ❤️!
Sam
Thank you so much, Brittini! We are so excited about his arrival (should be less than a month now!!). Congratulations on expecting your second! I hope you and your husband love the cupcakes!! <3
Corrin
That’s wonderful news Sam! I wish you a joyous start to your new life as a mom! 🙂
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you, Corrin!:)
Marta
Congratulations on such great news! Boys are so much fun!! Your lil man. Mine is 28 and he’s still got my heart. I’m going to make these as they look so delicious, especially with your lovely frosting.
Thank you for your great ideas! God bless you!
Sugar Spun Run
Marta, thank you so much! I really appreciate it. I hope that you enjoy the cupcake recipe. 🙂
Susan Lewis
Awwww, my son will be 34 in Nov.
Years fly by quick. Congrats, baby boys are so lovable. Your special day
sure is coming up quick. And what a cute cupcake recipe (if I ever become
a Grandma cause my son really needs to get going on the subject)
😀😁☺
Sugar Spun Run
Your comment made me smile, Susan! Yes, you will want to keep this recipe for when your son gets to that point. Thank you so much for your blessing. I appreciate it! 🙂