Vegan Chocolate Frosting Dairy Free

After sharing my vegan vanilla frosting recipe, it’s time to share our best dairy-free chocolate frosting for cake and cupcakes. It’s such an easy, delicious recipe that you will probably even make this to lick the spoon and snack on! Let me share with you how to make this delicious vegan chocolate buttercream frosting recipe.

What’s Vegan Chocolate Frosting?

It’s a chocolate frosting for vegan chocolate birthday cake and vegan chocolate cupcakes that is naturally:

dairy-free egg-free gluten-free soy-free

Dairy-Free Frosting Ingredients

So first, you need to gather four simple ingredients. The key to making a good creamy and silky dairy-free frosting is the choice of good quality unsweetened cocoa powder and good dairy-free butter.

Dairy-Free Butter – The choice of dairy-free butter is the key to making the frosting tasty and creamy. There are plenty of brands on the market, and there are two sorts of dairy-free butter. Let me explain. Dairy-free spread – also known as dairy-free margarine. Dairy-free spreads are soft from the pot. They are great to spread on toast or bread but not the best choice for frosting because they stay very soft. Also, some are made from highly flavored oil, like pressed olive oil or avocado oil, which ruins the frosting flavor. So, to make this vegan chocolate frosting recipe, stay away from vegan spread! The spread brands I don’t recommend are Earth Balance spread, Nutellex spread, Vutter. Dairy-free baking stick – This kind of dairy-free butter looks exactly like real butter. It’s hard in texture when bought from the grocery store, and like butter, it needs some time out of the fridge to soften. This is the one you need to make a good vegan frosting recipe! I love Earth Balance stick or Naturali Vegan Block. Of course, to use them in a frosting recipe, you need to take them out of the fridge for at least 30 minutes to soften. Unsweetened Cocoa Powder Or Cacao Powder – Both products work very well to make a tasty vegan chocolate frosting recipe. Cacao is darker in color and stronger in flavor. It makes a dark chocolate frosting with an earthy cocoa bean flavor that is less sweet. Cocoa is lighter in color, which makes the frosting taste more like milk chocolate frosting. Dairy-Free Milk – You can use any non-dairy milk in this recipe, like coconut milk, soy milk, oat milk, or almond milk. I recommend using milk at room temperature, or the frosting forms lumps or hardens in contact with cold milk. Powdered Sugar – Also known as icing sugar, it’s the light powdery version of crystal sugar. It adds a delicious sweet flavor to the frosting and thickens the mixture. For a sugar-free vegan chocolate frosting, replace powder sugar with powder allulose or powder erythritol. Both are sugar-free, natural, and diabetic-friendly. Vanilla Extract – It’s optional to add vanilla extract to a chocolate frosting, but who doesn’t like a touch of vanilla in frosting! You can also play with different flavor extracts using caramel extract, chocolate extract, or almond extract, depending on the cake or cupcakes you intend to frost with this recipe.

How To Make Vegan Chocolate Frosting

Troubleshooting

If your frosting gets too thick, add one tablespoon of extra dairy-free milk and beat until incorporated. Repeat this until it reaches your favorite frosting texture. If too thin, add more powdered sweetened up to 1/2 cup in total for this recipe.

Storage

This dairy-free chocolate frosting can be stored for up to 3 days in an airtight container in the fridge. It hardens in the fridge, so it’s recommended to pipe the frosting on the cupcakes before storing them in the fridge, or it became difficult to place in a piping bag. You can also freeze your frosting. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then bring to room temperature for 1 hour before piping.

Using Vegan Chocolate Frosting

This vegan chocolate frosting recipe is easy to pipe on top of cupcakes or to decorate layer cakes. You can use this recipe to make my vegan chocolate cupcakes, vegan German chocolate cake, or crazy chocolate cake.