Easy Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Mug Cake (Vegan)

If you’re craving a quick, single-serving dessert, make our chocolate chip pumpkin mug cake! This delicious and moist mini cake is the perfect fall dessert and it’s dairy free, vegan, gluten free, and nut free. Plus, it’s fast to make, and you can customize the toppings for a personalized treat.

On cool fall evenings, sometimes it’s nice to have a pumpkin spice baked treat. But if you’re short on time or don’t have an oven (hey, dorm living), then you can still have a treat in almost no time.

This pumpkin mug cake is a recipe that I’ve had on my mind for a while (like a lot of my recipes), and I finally decided to create it this fall and I love it! It reminds me of soft chocolate chip pumpkin cookies we used to get, but this one is allergy friendly and is faster to make.

This recipe is a great way to have a cake if you are a college student living in a dorm, especially since this recipe doesn’t require eggs!

Food allergy notes:

• Gluten free
• Egg free/vegan
• Dairy free
• Tree nut free and peanut free

Why we love this recipe

We love this recipe since it comes together so quickly, it uses simple ingredients, and it’s ready to eat in about 10 to 15 minutes, unlike a full sized cake. Since it only uses a little canned pumpkin, it’s a great way to use up leftover pumpkin puree from other recipes.

So if you’re in the mood for an allergy friendly and easy dessert for one person (or two), this is the perfect treat. It’s gluten free, vegan, and super fast to make, and you can top it however you like!

How to make a gluten free pumpkin mug cake

The best thing about this mug cake is that it’s really fast and you don’t need eggs or dairy for a fast cake!

Here are the steps to make our pumpkin spice mug cake (this is just an overview, the full recipe card is at the end of the post):

1. In a large, microwave-safe mug (about 10 ounces), stir together the dry ingredients (gluten free all-purpose baking mix, brown sugar, salt, baking powder, and spices).
2. Stir in the canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling), dairy free milk, oil, vanilla, and chocolate chips until a thick batter forms. Make sure to scrape the corners of the mug and the bottom of the mug.
3. Cook in the microwave at regular power for 1½ minutes (90 seconds).
4. Allow the mug cake to cool for about 10 minutes before eating (it will be hot so it needs to cool for at least 5 minutes before eating).
5. You can eat this plain, or top it with maple glaze, or frosting. For the photos, we melted about 1 Tablespoon of Violife Cocospread in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds and drizzled that on top of the pumpkin cake. But you can top it any way you like!
6. Store any leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Even though I used the melted Cocospread on ours for the photos, I’ll add a short recipe in the recipe card for the maple glaze that we have used on our mini maple donuts.

Optionally, you can brush a little oil in the bottom of the mug, mix everything together in a small bow, and scoop the batter into the prepared mug. Then once it’s cooked and cooled, remove the cake and frost or glaze the entire cake.

If you go this route, you’ll need to make sure it cools longer to make sure the cake stays intact when you remove it. But this would be a fun way to have a completely frosted mini cake!

Variations for this pumpkin mug cake recipe

If you want to add some flavor variations to this mini pumpkin cake, here are some ways you can change up the recipe a little bit:

• Swap the regular chocolate chips for dairy free white chocolate chips (like the mini ones from Enjoy Life).
• Use dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar for a deeper molasses taste.
• Stir in a little bit of instant coffee powder (1/2 to 1 teaspoon) to the mug cake to make a pumpkin spice latte-flavored mug cake.
• Top with our chocolate buttercream frosting once the cake is completely cooled.
• Add chocolate ganache to the top of the cake for an even richer chocolate topping.
• Top with Oat Haus granola butters, like their brownie batter flavor (so good!).
• Use a brown sugar alternative, such as Swerve, for a lower-sugar mug cake.
• Replace the brown sugar with coconut sugar for a more natural sweetener.

Can I use other gluten free flour besides King Arthur brand?

I have found that the Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 gluten free all purpose flour blend works pretty well as a replacement for the King Arthur gluten free all purpose baking mix I typically use.

The Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten free flour does tend to result in slightly more dry baked goods when using the same recipe, but since our pumpkin mug cake is pretty moist to begin with, I don’t think this will make much of a difference.

If you’re replacing the brand I’ve recommended in the recipe card with something else, you’ll need to make sure that it has xanthan gum (or another similar binder) in the flour blend.

This is important since our mug cake doesn’t use eggs and the xanthan gum acts as a binder. If you don’t have eggs or gluten, you’ll need another binder for the recipe (like the xanthan gum) to make sure it stays together after baking and doesn’t just fall apart.

A note on the different King Arthur gluten free flours

You’ll also need to note that the recipe calls for the King Arthur all-purpose gluten free baking mix, which is a bit different than the King Arthur gluten free all-purpose baking flour.

Most of my recipes that use gluten free flour that’s not sorghum flour use the King Arthur gluten free baking mix (the top one) that has added baking powder, salt, and xanthan gum.

If you’re using the King Arthur gluten free all-purpose flour (the second one in the image), you’ll need to add a pinch of xanthan gum (or similar) to the recipe since it doesn’t include that.

If you use the King Arthur gluten free measure-for-measure flour, you won’t have to add any xanthan gum since it’s included, but you may have to add an additional dash of salt and baking powder since it does not include those.

In addition to these ones listed, they also have several specific gluten free baking mixes (such as brownie mix, cookie mix, etc. But I just wanted to list the plain gluten free baking mixes/flours.

Hopefully this image gives a good comparison! Since they offer several gluten free flour products that can sometimes be confusing when I list a specific type in my recipes, so I try to add notes specifying which one I use. And adding the image hopefully helps as well!

Pin for later!

Check out our allergy friendly pumpkin recipes and our roundup of gluten free mug cake recipes!