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.
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 
).
Why make your own vegan butter?
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!
How to use vegan butter
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 you definitely can use this for frostings in a pinch.
And for everything else – this vegan butter works great!
So much buttery flavor!
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.
The buttery flavor comes about from the vegan 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.
How about that texture..
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.
Homemade Vegan Butter Q&A
How long does it keep in the fridge? 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.
It keeps for up to 2-weeks in the fridge, though it’s at it’s best for around 10-12 days.
Can I freeze it? Yes, if you’re going to want to use it for 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.
What can I use instead of canola oil? I found the canola oil to have a very neutral taste and to work well for this, but other options are avocado oil or olive oil. If you are going to use olive oil though then don’t blend the olive oil in. Blend everything else and then stir the olive oil in. Olive oil can tend towards a bitter taste when blended too long.
Can I use extra virgin coconut oil instead of refined coconut oil? Extra virgin coconut oil can be used but the flavor just wasn’t nearly so good when I tried it. It ends up with a coconut flavor. And I like coconut flavor, so it’s not like I had something against that.
The blend of flavors wasn’t as nice and it didn’t taste as buttery as it does when you use refined coconut oil. 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.
What is the nutritional yeast for? It adds buttery flavor. However, it’s only used in a small amount so you can omit it if it’s an ingredient you have an issue with. You will lose some buttery flavor but that’s all.
What is the turmeric used for? The turmeric is just for color. So you can omit it, but it’s great to add it for a more buttery look. Make sure you only use a small pinch though. 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 glass 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.
This vegan butter would be great in these recipes:
- Vegan Garlic Bread
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Pound Cake
- Vegan Bread Pudding
- Vegan Apple Crisp
- Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
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.
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Homemade Vegan Butter
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Total Time: 5 mins
- Yield: ~275g/9.7oz Block of Butter
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* (See Notes)
- 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.
*Avocado oil is a great option to use instead of canola oil. Olive oil also works but bear in mind that 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.
- Category: How to, Gluten-Free
- Method: Blend
- Cuisine: Vegan
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 tsp
- Calories: 39
- Sodium: 22mg
- Fat: 4.1g
- Saturated Fat: 3.1g
Keywords: vegan butter
I am just trying this recipe. I don’t have Apple cider and use white Balsamico (aceto do vino bianco) instead. But my soy milk doesn’t curdle. What is the secret? Should inside warm soy milk?
You can still use it even if it didn’t curdle, but the only vinegar that is good to use generally is apple cider or white distilled.
This is very good to excellent taste. It reminds me of the margarine though but hey margarine is very good too. I do have one question. This recipe is basically exactly the same as vegan mayo but it has coconut oil so it can become hard. Have you tried more avocado/canola oil and less coconut oil? Because when I make mayo it is also very thick creamy but it doesn’t get hard.
Thanks
★★★★★
Hi Eugene, we recently went through a further batch of testing for this recipe, adding more canola oil and even adding things like coconut cream to it to see if it would be softer or more easily spreadable but we didn’t find that there was any discernable change in texture and the taste was not improved by any of these changes. We concluded that the recipe is perfect as it is. 🙂
So happy to have found this. Traveling in areas that I can’t buy vegan butter so this is wonderful. And yummy! Personally because I love Nutritional yeast I doubled it in the recipe and it worked well for me.
★★★★★
Awesome! Thanks so much Sarah!
I love popcorn. I am looking for a butter-flavored topping that has a minimum of saturated fat. Coconut oil is very high in saturated fat. After reading a few of the comments it seems that the coconut oil is required to make it set like real butter. For my purposes then, the coconut oil doesn’t seem necessary since it needs to be liquid when I pour it on my popcorn. Will I lose any of the buttery taste if I eliminate the coconut oil?
Also, I’m assuming I would not need to blend the ingredients as long.
Hi John, I don’t know how it would be if you left off the coconut oil in favor of a different oil to get a buttery liquid, I guess you could try it, but it’s not something I’ve experimented with so I’m not sure really!
Can I use sunflower oil instead of canola oil?
Sure!
Better Butter. Vegan butter can’t get any better. You are awesome. My family loves it. I am just looking forward for a melting, stretchy cheese for my foody daughter.
★★★★★
So happy to hear that! We do have a few vegan cheese recipes, our vegan mozzarella sounds like it may be what you are looking for. 🙂
Wow! This is surprisingly close to dairy butter. Spread on toast, crackers or baked goods it was virtually the same. Stuck to the blender a bit but that’s to be expected with the coconut oil.
★★★★★
Thanks Kal!
Hi! Im so excited to try this recipe! I’m curious about the Apple cider vinegar. Can I omit or is there something I can replace with like lemon juice?
Thanks so much for all your delicious vegan recipes!!
You can try making the buttermilk with lemon juice instead.