I can’t even tell you how pleased I am about this homemade vegan butter!
It is just perfect! It’s wonderful on bread, for spreading (and melting) on toast, you can use it for baking, for frying, for whatever you would usually use your vegan butter for!
And it’s homemade!
It has a wonderfully buttery flavor and takes all of about 5 minutes to make (a little longer to set ).
Now you might be asking: why do I want to make my own vegan butter when I can just buy some?
Well here’s the thing – a very common question I get asked on my baked goods that use vegan butter is: ‘where can I find vegan butter?’ because a lot of countries don’t seem to have great availability for this.
Or it might be that you don’t love all the ingredients in the brands that are available to you, or maybe you’re like me and are just delighted when you can make your own things!
I wanted to make sure that this vegan butter is good for various uses, so I tried it for frying and fried up some mushrooms with some spring onions and it was perfect (and delicious!).
And then I wanted to make sure it was good for baking, so I creamed it up with some sugar and made some vegan oatmeal cookies with it, and they were perfect!
And as you can see I’ve been spreading it on bread and toast and just enjoying it all the ways one tends to enjoy butter!
The one place I didn’t love it was using it in a frosting. This is because it gets very soft/melty at room temperature and very hard in the fridge. This is of course because the base is coconut oil and this is what coconut oil does!
Store-bought vegan butters tend to not get super hard in the fridge, and also tend to not get ultra runny in hot temperatures which is why they work better in frostings. So for this reason it isn’t ideal in a frosting and I’m going to stick with the store-bought variety for that.
But for everything else – this vegan butter works great!
I mentioned above that it has a buttery flavor, well truth be told I have not tasted dairy butter in a lot of years!
But comparing the flavor to vegan buttery spreads on the market, it compares very favorably. It’s damn good I must say!
It does get very hard in the fridge, so it’s more like a traditional butter in that sense, if you want to spread it on bread or cream it up with sugar for baking, it’s best to let it soften slightly out the fridge first.
Spreading on toast is of course fine as is and it doesn’t need to soften first.
You’ll also find the texture of it tends towards crumbly when it’s still hard straight from the fridge, but this doesn’t have any impact on the result once spread. And to avoid this, let it soften a bit first.
This is of course a fresh homemade product, so while the oils in the vegan butter are long lasting (the base of this is refined coconut oil), other ingredients such as the non-dairy milk, are not.
So if you want to keep it for any length of time (longer than 2 weeks) then freeze the excess and only keep on hand what you are going to use. When you’re ready to use the frozen portion, just pop it in the fridge where it will thaw and get ready for use.
I tried this with various ingredients to test the recipe, I tried it with olive oil instead of canola oil and extra virgin coconut oil instead of refined coconut oil, and honestly it comes out BEST with the ingredients in the final recipe below.
The extra virgin coconut oil can be used I guess, it’s not like it was gross or anything, but the flavor just wasn’t nearly so good. And I like coconut flavor, so it’s not like I had something against that. It was just that the blend of flavors wasn’t as nice. Also after only around a week in the fridge, it had got a sort of whitish look to it, like lard, rather than like butter. You can definitely try that though if you have an issue with using refined coconut oil, just know that the result is not as good.
Olive oil seemed to give this a bitter taste. The canola oil worked much better. Now I know people have been asking me how I can use olive oil in my cakes ever since I started this blog, but really I have never tasted an unpleasant bitterness from using olive oil before, until making this vegan butter. So canola is the better option. (Update: A reader has pointed out that olive oil tends to become bitter when blended at high speeds so if you would like to use olive oil for this, just add it in at the end and mix it in without blending.)
The buttery flavor comes about from the buttermilk – apple cider vinegar mixed in with unsweetened soy milk or almond milk, I tested both and both worked great – and a little nutritional yeast.
Refined coconut oil is very neutral in flavor yet perfect in texture, so it enables this vegan butter to take on the other flavors added to it.
And then a pinch of turmeric provides the yellow color, but make sure it’s just a pinch. I tried it with a 1/4 tsp and oh my the color was luminous yellow, like the color of those highlighter pens!
If you love homemade things, then you will love this homemade vegan butter! It is:
- Creamy
- Buttery
- Spreadable
- Melty
- Great for baking or frying
Use it anywhere you would use a vegan butter! Keep it covered in a butter dish in the fridge where it will keep for up to 2-weeks – the italics there are because I tested this all the way up to day 15, and it still tasted okay but there was just something in the taste that was saying, hmmm, maybe this is past its best days!
I would say it has a fridge life of up to 14 days but really it is at its best for around 10-12 days. If you know you won’t use it that fast, then keep around only what you’ll use right away and freeze the rest.
So what do you think of this vegan butter? Let me know in the comments! And if you make it, let me know how it worked out! And please rate the recipe as this is super helpful.
For other delicious homemade vegan basics, check out these recipes:
- 3-Ingredient Caramel Sauce
- How to make Vegan Condensed Milk
- How to make Cashew Butter
- How to make Almond Milk
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PrintHomemade Vegan Butter
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Prep Time: 5 mins
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Total Time: 5 mins
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Yield: ~275g/9.7oz Block of Butter
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Category: How to, Spread
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Cuisine: Vegan
Description
Creamy and super buttery homemade vegan butter! Easy 7-ingredient recipe that is spreadable, melts fabulously on toast and is great for baking and frying.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (240ml) Refined Coconut Oil (Melted)*
- 2 Tbsp Canola Oil*
- 1/3 cup (80ml) Unsweetened Soy or Almond Milk
- 1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 tsp Nutritional Yeast
- Small Pinch Turmeric
- 1/2 tsp Salt
Instructions
- Add melted refined coconut oil to the blender jug along with the canola oil.
- Add the apple cider vinegar to the unsweetened soy or almond milk and stir in so that it curdles into buttermilk and then add it in.
- Add the nutritional yeast, small pinch of turmeric and salt.
- Blend very well until smooth.
- Pour out into a butter dish and refrigerate until set.
- Remove from the fridge to thaw for a few minutes if using on fresh bread or creaming with sugar for baking.
Notes
*Must be refined coconut oil not extra virgin coconut oil.
*Readers have been suggesting avocado oil as an option instead of the canola oil and I think this would also work great. Olive oil would also work but as another reader has pointed out – don’t blend it as high speed blending can cause olive oil to become bitter. If using olive oil, add it in at the end and mix in without blending.
*Lasts up to 2-weeks in refrigerator. If you need it to last longer, freeze the excess and only keep what you will use within 2-weeks in your fridge.
*Inspired by Fork and Beans.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 tsp
- Calories: 39
- Sodium: 22mg
- Fat: 4.1g
- Saturated Fat: 3.1g
Keywords: vegan butter
Our son is allergic to dairy and pea protein (amongst other things) so most store vegan products are not for us. This recipe works well and is very easy! It tastes pretty darn good in my opinion. Thanks so much!
★★★★★
Thanks Christopher! So glad it worked well. 🙂
Thanks
That is amazing
★★★★★
Could you use oatmilk instead of soy milk?
This is amazing. Tastes great with better spreadability than butter. Thanks for the recipe. I noticed the start of some mould spores on mine after about a week despite keeping it in the fridge. Could this be because i left it outside one day, or do you perhaps know of a preservative i could use?
Hi Brandon, I don’t know of a preservative, but I suppose it could be because it was outside for a day. Mine didn’t have that issue, and it was refrigerated the whole time, so maybe the day out was the cause. So happy you like the recipe! 🙂
O, i also used “homemade” macadamia milk (made from macadamia butter and water) instead of almond milk and it came out great. Because you can keep this in the fridge and maintain spreadability the taste trumps butter as well.
★★★★★
Oh interesting! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
What does the nutritional yeast do and can it be substituted for something else?
It adds buttery flavor but you can leave it out.
is this recipe the vegan equivelent to “unsalted butter”, I just wanted to know because the recipe contains salt in it
Hi Diana, there is salt in it, which is for flavor so that it’s delicious as a spread. If you specifically need an unsalted version you could easily leave out the salt.