Vegan Buttercream Icing Recipe

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Back in January, I whipped up a gorgeous, delicious dairy free, gluten-free chocolate cake for my daughter’s birthday. One of her little friends has several food allergies, so I had gamely volunteered to take on the task of creating my first gluten/dairy free cake. It was spectacular and I surprised myself. While doing that however, I also had to come up with a vegan buttercream icing recipe.

I realized today while looking through my posts that I never posted my recipe for the vegan buttercream icing that went on top of it!

Bad Magpie. Shame on you. So here it is, my vegan buttercream icing recipe.

Having to cut the butter and cream out of my original  buttercream icing / frosting recipe I was left with icing sugar and vanilla as ingredients, not exactly the most inspiring place to start.

My kitchen looked like a mad kitchen scientist’s playground when I took on this project.I tasted butter replacements until I had to scrape my tongue. Seriously. Some of the products out there shouldn’t be on the shelf, I tell you. I had a fridge FULL of non-dairy “butters” and margarines.

I soon realized that many of the products out there had subtle flavors that were enhanced to a simply unpalatable level once you added vanilla. I couldn’t find one stick “butter” that didn’t have a weird taste simply explode when I added in vanilla.

I also came to the conclusion after two batches attempted with poor tasting “butters”  that I was wasting ingredients by trying to overcome an unpleasant flavor with sugar and vanilla. It cannot be done and I should have known better. You have to start with a base “butter” that tastes good to start with. So after countless taste testing of plain products straight from their container/wrapper, I finally came up with a winner.

Becel Vegan Margarine. This margarine tastes great plain and tastes as close as possible to my original recipe. This recipe depends on the fact that you use it, I guarantee you will enjoy this icing as long as you use the Becel.

Ingredients Needed:

1 cup of Becel Vegan Margarine
3  teaspoons of vanilla
4 cups of icing sugar
1-3 tsp of rice milk

Using a stand mixer or hand beaters, whip the margarine until fluffy.

Slowly add in the icing sugar until it’s combined well.

Add in your vanilla.

At this point, check your consistency. Margarine isn’t as dense as butter, so my amount of rice milk is very small. Is your icing nice and whippy at this point? Try maybe a slight teaspoon of rice milk. I chose rice milk because it’s virtually tasteless, allowing the vanilla to flavor the icing instead. I would not use soy because of the after taste you can get with it.

Once you are happy with the consistency, place in the refrigerator until you are going to decorate.

This icing will pipe – see the picture above, I did simple stars to show how it will hold. As with any true buttercream, you will have to keep it cold and perhaps throw your icing bag into the freezer every once in a while when the heat of your hands starts to affect the consistency.

This cake below is all vegan buttercream icing for the icing parts. It comes out a lovely off white, tastes amazing and everyone was amazed that the icing was vegan! It was a complete birthday cake success.

You will have to refrigerate the cake to keep the icing nice and set, just like buttercream icing, but it can be left out for a few hours at the actual event safely.

Enjoy everyone and have fun creating and impressing everyone with your mad vegan buttercream icing skills!

Love,

It’s Feeling Like a Cake Baking Kind Of Day Magpie

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Vegan Buttercream Icing

Simply the best tasting vegan buttercream icing. You have to use the exact brand of vegan margarine I suggest. Be prepared to impress!

5 from 4 votes

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Course: Desset

Cuisine: Vegan

Prep Time: 5 minutes minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes minutes

Servings: 12

Calories: 268kcal

Author: Karlynn Johnston

Ingredients 

1x2x3x

• ▢ 1 cup of Becel Vegan Margarine
• ▢ 3 teaspoons of vanilla
• ▢ 4 cups of icing sugar (Rogers is a vegan brand!)
• ▢ 1-3 teaspoons of rice milk

Instructions

• Using a stand mixer or hand beaters, whip the margarine until fluffy.
• Slowly add in the icing sugar until it’s combined well.
• Add in your vanilla.
• At this point, check your consistency. Margarine isn’t as dense as butter, so my amount of rice milk is very small. Is your icing nice and whippy at this point? Try maybe a slight teaspoon of rice milk. I chose rice milk because it’s virtually tasteless, allowing the vanilla to flavor the icing instead. I would not use soy because of the after taste you can get with it.
• Once you are happy with the consistency, place in the refrigerator until you are going to decorate.

Notes

There are TONS of vegan icing sugars, try Red Path, Trader Joe’s, do your research and find one! I use Red Path.

Nutrition

Calories: 268kcal | Carbohydrates: 40g | Fat: 12g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Sodium: 122mg | Potassium: 5mg | Sugar: 39g | Vitamin A: 720IU

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