Request: Gluten Free, Vegan Cupcake Frosting Recipes?

[dray]

Anyone have any tried-and-true gluten free/vegan frosting recipes for cupcakes? I'd like to make some cupcakes for my coworkers to celebrate a semi-fancy engagement. I don't often bake, but frosting sans-dairy (and eggs? It's been years) has always been a bug-bear. Anything you've tried with substitutes for butter that isn't overwhelmingly coconut-oil flavoured would be helpful.

Thanks!

Comments

use a glaze instead??

[harmonic_tabby]

My coconut oil doesn't seem overwhelming when I use it as a substitute for shortenings/oils but guess folks have different taste sensitivities. If you add a flavoring to the frosting; peppermint for a chocolate cupcake?? that might reduce any notice of coconut.

Moving on to the glaze...many of those recipes are nothing more than milk, confectioners sugar and a flavoring like vanilla. So, substitute a nut milk or rice milk or something similar to glaze the tops and then sprinkle with something to add festivity: chopped nuts, sugar sprinkles, crushed candy like cinnamon redhots.

I don't know what kind of flavors you're planning to use but layering flavors is certainly an option that adds complexity and enriches the taste experience.
1) chocolate cupcakes with hazelnut glaze sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts.
2) carrotcake with cream cheese frosting sprinkled with chopped pecans (yes, I know these have dairy but they're just an illustration.)
3) pumpkin cake with caramel glaze
4) apple coffee cake with almond glaze and slivered almonds

Hope these tips spark an idea for you,

Tabs

[runpunkrun]

I don't have a specific recipe for you, but I've seen a lot of vegan frostings that use palm oil shortening like Spectrum. Palm shortening is flavorless and gives you a really great texture and a frosting that doesn't melt in warmer weather.

[kelkyag]

It's not frosting, but I've gotten respectable ganache-like results just melting chocolate chips (or your prefered mix of chocolate and sugar here) with some almond milk & dipping the tops of the cupcakes in that. That'd also pair with harmonic_tabby's suggestion of further decorating with nuts, or candied fruit or ginger, or mint leaves, or fresh or candied edible flowers, or ...

[indywind]

Not tried-and-true, but I've been looking for an occasion to try chickpea-liquid meringue. In theory the pea protein in the liquid makes it behave like egg whites. A friend of mine has made it and said it worked so well that she didn't save any to share, she just ate the whole batch.

Here's a recipe for frosting based on that principle:
https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-magic-vegan-icing-236214

[fred_mouse]

I use either macadamia oil (if I can get it) or rice-bran oil as my butter substitute. The macadamia has more of a mouth feel of butter, while the rice bran manages to not have a 'wrong' flavour.

My recipe is very simple, uses pure icing sugar (because local icing mixture is usually not gluten-free), oil, water (or lemon juice if I'm doing lemon icing), flavour and colour. I rub the oil in (not a lot? I do this entirely by feel these days), so that it is evenly spread through the icing sugar, and then I drip in the colour and flavour, and then very gently drip in the water. And stir until it has the texture I want.

If I actually want something closer to butter cream, which I haven't done in over a decade, from memory I used a vegan margarine, which in this case would have been Nuttelex brand. Trying to remember if there was something tricky in terms of how cold it needed to be, but I think it has just been too long!