This delicious vegan buttercream frosting is silky, smooth and velvety and perfect to spread on cakes or pipe onto cupcakes. Easy 4-ingredient recipe.
This vegan buttercream frosting is so creamy and silky you will fall completely in love with it!
It works wonderfully spread onto cakes or piped onto cupcakes. It would also be wonderful spread onto cookies. If you’re looking for a frosting for some vegan sugar cookies, this would work great!
It’s a simple 4-ingredient recipe that is totally versatile and comes out beautifully every time.
When testing this recipe I tried it out on our vegan vanilla cake and that is the cake that you see featured below. I doubled our vanilla cake recipe to make it a 9-inch beauty and this frosting was the perfect amount to spread onto a 9-inch cake.
As you can see from the photos below, I probably went a little heavy with the frosting in the middle of the cake, it’s a little thicker in the middle than it is on top, whoops!
But it’s definitely enough frosting for a 9-inch cake and if you want to use it for an 8-inch cake it will be great too. You’ll just have it on a little thicker, which is never a problem in my view.
The cupcakes featured in these photos are our vegan vanilla cupcakes and piped on as you see in these photos, this was the perfect amount of frosting to frost 12 cupcakes.
As you can see it’s a lot of frosting that I piped on though, if you piped on less, or if you spread it instead of piping it, you could frost a lot more cupcakes!
How to make vegan buttercream frosting
Add powdered sugar, vegan butter, vanilla extract and a little salt to a stand mixer.
Starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until the frosting is thick and smooth with a silky spreadable texture.
If your mixer has a fairly small bowl (like mine) then hold a tea towel or paper towel over it (carefully, don’t let it get caught up in the mixer) when it starts so that powdered sugar doesn’t puff up out of the bowl.
Alternatively you can cream the butter first and then add in the powdered sugar bit by bit but that method doesn’t usually fit in with my impatient personality.
Tips for the best vegan buttercream
The most important thing to a good vegan buttercream is the texture. It needs to be really silky and spreadable but also firm enough to pipe. So you’re looking for a really thick, but silky, consistency.
So the vegan butter that you use becomes quite important for this.
The ideal texture for your vegan butter is one that is quite firm.
You can use something like Earth Balance buttery sticks if you have access to it, but a vegan butter that comes in a tub is also going to be great, it just needs to be one that is fairly firm.
You get some tubs of vegan butter that are really soft straight from the fridge, like they are just never firm. That will be less ideal here. If that’s all you have access to, then you might just need to add about ¼ to ½ cup more powdered sugar to get this to the right consistency.
If all you can get is those bricks of margarine (that might be accidentally vegan) that are rock hard, then that will work, but you might need to add a few drops of soy milk or almond milk to it.
The difference in textures with vegan butters is all about water content, if it’s really soft, it likely has a higher water content, if it’s very firm, it has a lower water content. This is why it has an impact on your end result.
So if following the recipe as written results in something that is not thick enough, add more powdered sugar and don’t be shy.
If it results in something much too thick, add in some non-dairy milk a drop at a time.
Vegan Buttercream Q&A
Can I use coconut oil instead of vegan butter? Not in this recipe. It’s really important that the ‘butter’ part of the buttercream be a vegan butter.
What brand of vegan butter do you recommend? I have used a few, I have used and like Nuttelex (Australian brand) and Earth Balance (USA) but since we have a worldwide audience, I don’t generally find it that useful to recommend a particular brand. Use what is available and follow the tips above in getting the right texture irrespective of the brand you use.
How long does this keep? This will keep at room temperature for around 3 days. It will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks though. So if you need to make it in advance of a cake, you can do so. It does firm up in the fridge, so if it gets too firm, then bring it back to room temperature on the countertop before using.
Can I freeze this buttercream? Yes sure! When you’re ready to use it, let it thaw in the fridge overnight.
How many cupcakes will I be able to frost with this recipe? It depends! If you’re piping like I did in these pictures, then it will frost 12 cupcakes. If you’re just doing a spread of frosting on top, then it could be enough for triple that number! And if you’re piping the frosting but doing it much less generously (not going for the ice cream cone look) then maybe you could frost as many as 18-24 cupcakes.
What size cake is this vegan buttercream for? It frosts a 9-inch two layer cake beautifully, as shown in these photos, or an 8-inch two layer cake very generously.
I hope you’ll love this vegan buttercream frosting recipe! It is:
- Silky
- Smooth
- Velvety
- Super easy
- 4-Ingredients
Enjoy on cakes or cupcakes or cookies!
Use this vegan buttercream frosting in the following recipes:
- Vegan Vanilla Cake – follow the directions for a 9-inch cake.
- The Best Vegan Chocolate Cake – if you want to make this into a tuxedo cake, use this buttercream instead of the chocolate frosting.
- Classic Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
- Vegan White Cake
- Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes
- Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes
So let us know what you think of this vegan buttercream frosting in the comments and please leave a rating too, thank you!
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Vegan Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
- 3 and ½ cups (420g) Powdered Sugar
- 1 cup (225g) Vegan Butter
- ¼ tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- Add the powdered sugar, vegan butter, salt and vanilla extract to the bowl of a stand mixer and starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until thick and smooth.
- If your consistency is too thick, add a little non-dairy milk a drop at a time, and if it's too thin, add ¼ to ½ cup more powdered sugar.
- Spread onto cakes or pipe onto cupcakes.
- Store leftovers in the fridge.
Notes
- This recipe makes enough for 12 cupcakes when piped generously (as pictured) or to frost an 8 or 9-inch two layer cake.
Can I ice a cake with this and put the whole thing in the freezer if I have an event in 5 days?
Yes, this frosting does freeze well.
Quite hard to rate this as I don’t know exactly what the issue is, it’s likely it was the butter so I just wanted to say, don’t use ‘Pure Butter’. It was way too soft and runny. It seemed fine in the bowl and when applying, but it soon melted and slid down the cake.
Hi Jo, thanks for the tip! Some brands of vegan butter just don’t work well, when you find one that does, you can stick to using that brand.
Made this today with Nuttelex. Was so good easy to pipe and got many compliments. Will be my go to butter icing from now on.
Thanks
Awesome Jackie, yes Nuttelex is a great brand and works really well for frostings! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Hi, I’m going to attempt this frosting, along with your vegan gluten-free carrot cake recipe, to surprise my boyfriend for his birthday! Thank you for both recipes.
Quick question, I am without a stand mixer, will a food processor work?
I think a food processor should work! All the best! 🙂
My grocery store luckily has a wide selection of vegan butters, I was wondering if you have a favorite you use for this recipe?
Hi Carmela, I have used lots of different brands and usually like them all. Sticks or firm tub style butters work best. If it’s very soft, it generally doesn’t work well.
I tried this frosting on my chocolate g/f cupcakes and it worked well and I was able to frost well with a top. But…. have you tried coconut milk as the base and added powdered sugar to it? Would this work so that it is pipe-able with a tip – I don’t love traditional butter and powder sugar and like the taste of coconut milk (can) much better. Not sure if it would work?
Hi Aneesha, yes we have done frosting like this, check out our vegan chocolate ganache frosting. 🙂
Alison, I have actually made that delicious ganache- omitting the chocolate though and adding vanilla extract would make it vanilla I think, I will try that for the party cake I’m making. Hopefully turns out fine (needs to be white so I can color it for a rainbow cake)
This is actually my second time making vegan buttercream using your recipe. The first time it was spreadable but sweat a lot. Still tasted really good. This time I used a different butter (Country Crock Plant Butter made from Olive Oil in stick form) and it came out beautifully! Thank you very much!
Hi Grace! Finding a good vegan butter to use (which of course is different depending on where you are) makes such a big difference! Thanks so much for sharing and the great review.
Im in the UK and use Flora Plant butter which has an unsalted version which is perfect for vegan buttercream
Hi there! I was wondering: the Earth Balance vegan butters I’ve found are typically salted. Will this still work or will the salt come through in a bad way affecting the taste of the butter cream? Thanks! -Jessica
Hi Jessica, no, most of the vegan butter I use is also salted so it’s not an issue.
Thanks for the recipe. Just an FYI: my vegan butter’s softness is a factor of the ration of oils used to make it. For very firm more coconut oil or cocoa butter is used and less canola or other liquid when cold or room temperature oil.
Can I use oil instead of butter for the frost?
No, but you can use a homemade vegan butter.