Fruit Colored Dairy Free Frosting

This dairy free frosting is vegan and plant-based, with fruits providing the color. Best of all, it is perfect to use for piping frosting on to cakes and cupcakes because of three secret tricks. The perfect frosting for piping for cupcakes and cake decorating.

Fruit Colored Dairy Free Frosting

So we are here to discuss frosting. And not just any frosting, a dairy free frosting that is vegan - no bone char - and is stiff enough to pipe properly.

You might remember I have another vegan frosting recipe here that uses shortening.

This recipe is different because it uses butter. It comes out to be the perfect texture to pipe with, just as the recipe that uses shortening. However, this frosting takes a bit more buttery if that is important to you.

I also stuffed some of my icing into the center of these cupcakes.

Kind of an icing overload here.

To stuff them, I removed the center core of each cupcake with the opening side of the piping tip. If you press it down into soft cake, it grabs a tube of cake as you pull out.

I then let these excess cake cores air-dry overnight at room temperature. After the cupcakes were frosted, we crumbled the cake crumbs over the top as a sprinkling.

How is that for multi-tasking ingredients!

Tricks to Make Dairy Free Frosting Stable

Are you ready to learn the best way to make a frosting stiff and excellent for piping?

It's using room-temperature vegan butter. I was using cold for the longest time and then one day recently I forgot to chill it. The butter creamed up so much more easily.

The other trick is to whip up the butter first, for about 3-5 minutes. Then add the sugar gradually.

I have to say you'll get a smoother consistency if you use a stand-mixer because the even mixing power is stronger than a hand-mixer. But I have used a hand-mixer and still found it pipable, just not quite as smooth as you see here.

A third trick is to add a bit of tapioca, a vegan thickener that comes from a cassava plant.

How To Color Dairy Free Frosting Using Fruits

I love to use fruit and other plants to color frosting.

And here I made two different batches of cupcakes two different shades of pink with dragon fruit, or pitaya, a superfood fruit indigenous to Central America, that is grown now in many Asian countries and tropical areas. No where near Washington DC though.

So I used frozen dragon fruit pulp that I found in the freezer area of Whole Foods. If you can find pink pitaya fresh in your area, grab it up!

Or you can use pitaya powder, I use this brand for both the fresh pulp and the powder. Here in the markets in Washington DC, I can often find fresh dragon fruit with white flesh, but not pink.

Still the frozen variety serves up the same nutrients.

It is a super immunity-booster, high in fiber and even has prebiotics. It also stabilizes blood sugar levels, and is high in disease-fighting antioxidants.

And the color is swoon-worthy, so it was the first fruit I thought of when I wanted to make pink buttercream frosting. The secret to achieving a uniform color is in the puree.

And I have since started subbing other fruit to make other color frostings. Mango for yellow, kiwi for green, blueberries for blue, and carrots (why not?) for orange! The beauty of using fruits to color the frostings is that you add flavor as well! The options are endless really.

Now, I realize I am repeating the word "healthy" a lot. But I'm not kidding myself that because I use organic sugar and fruit to color that this frosting that it is suddenly all highly nutritious.

Nope, sugar is sugar and needs to be eaten in moderation.

So I also make sure the cake also uses healthy whole food ingredients.

Here I used my black cocoa and black tahini cupcakes so high in magnesium and antioxidants. But I also love using my sneaky zucchini cupcakes here.

Other Vegan Frosting & Icing Recipes

Vegan Royal Icing for Sugar Cooking Decorating
Dairy Free Frosting
Vegan Buttercream
2 ingredient Chocolate Frosting
Healthy Chocolate Frosting
Peanut Butter Frosting

I hope you enjoy my colorful vegan buttercream frosting recipe! Are you on pinterest? Perhaps share this image..

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