Moist, cheesy and buttery. Truly the Best Cheese Cupcakes I’ve ever had. What’s that on top? Cheese Crumble topping! And that’s why it is even more amazing!
My favorite childhood school snack right here! Feeling nostalgic as I write this while munching on a piece. In fact, it’s what I’ve been snacking on for the past few days. Just one cupcake a day. I’m afraid I’ll run before I can make another batch again.
Cheese Cupcakes are every Filipino kid’s favorite school snack (baon in Filipino). And there are three words (ingredients) that best describe it.
- Cheese
- Butter
- Condensed Milk
It’s not your typical cheese cupcakes. It is, in all essence, a Filipino style cake. We love our cheese dishes and snacks to be on the sweet side rather than savory. And that is why using condensed milk as its sweetener was just ingenious!
TIPS! Moist and delicious Filipino Cheese Cupcakes
- Use pure unsalted butter. There is no better substitute for it, even oil. Pure butter is sweet, buttery and creamy.
- Milk plus vinegar. This is a simple homemade buttermilk mixture that can make any cake wonderfully moist.
- Don’t substitute condensed milk with sugar. Full stop. In fact, this recipe doesn’t include sugar in the cupcake batter. The sweetness of the condensed milk is all we need.
- Mix the batter until “just combined”. Don’t over mix. Stop mixing as soon as you no longer see any white powder. Mixing the wet and dry ingredients separately is a good trick to avoid overmixing.
Love to bake? Try these too!
Banana Chocolate Marble Bread
Soft Spanish Bread
Ensaymada Cupcakes
Types of cheese
You won’t need any fancy cheeses to make these cheese cupcakes. As simple as processed cheddar cheese will work wonderfully for this recipe. Of course, you can also use natural cheese if available.
- Cheddar cheese
- Edam cheese
- Gouda cheese
- Monterey Jack or Colby
- Swiss Cheese
- quick melt processed cheese
What won’t work for this recipe is Mozarella as it doesn’t blend well with cake batters. It also becomes gooey and sticky once cooled. Yes, I have, unfortunately, tried it personally.

Cheese Cupcake Crumble
Cheese Crumble Topping
It is NOT optional, to me at least. It brought the cheese cupcakes to a whole new level of deliciousness and I love it! TRUST me on this.
Tip 1: Finish making the cupcakes down to filling up the muffin tins with the batter before making the crumble topping. The fresher the crumble the easier it is to handle i.e. sprinkle over the cupcakes.
Tip 2: Use cold butter and cut it in cubes. Mix it with flour and sugar first before adding in the grated cheese.
Watch the video on how to make The Best Cheese Cupcakes with Cheese Crumble
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Hi! Me again ??
Will it work if we use the same cheese for the crumble and the condensed milk in can is of what size? Thanks
I used the same cheese for the cake and crumble. The recipe does appear confusing, sorry about that. I’ll update it. Thank you ha.. and for the condensed milk 392g it says in the can of Milkmaid. I think that’s the regular size can.
Hi! I’d like to ask if it’s okay to use salted butter and omit the salt in the recipe and for milk can I use the evaporated kind? Thanks!
Hi Roj, yes omit salt if using salted butter. For the evaporated milk, I haven’t tried that in this recipe. If you happen to give it a try, I’d love to know how they turned out.
Hi! Just wanna double how many tbsp of butter to be used in the crumble? I’ve seen the video and looks likes more than 3tbsps 🙂
Hi Tin, you can use up to 1/4 cup of butter or 50g.
Just made it today love the taste the problem is my crumble it melted maybe because i did not cut into pieces the butter i added the whole 50g of butter into the flour and sugar then use fork to mix them before adding the cheese 😔 for the milk i always use evap milk whenever i make buttermilk and it works
This happens to me all the time! You just loose the crunchy texture of the topping but it’s still the best flavor wise 😉. I’ve never tried using evap to make buttermilk. Thanks for the tip!