Fruit-colored Vegan Buttercream Frosting
I love to use fruit and other plants to color frosting.
This frosting is vegan and comes out to be the perfect texture to pipe with.
And here I made it pink with dragonfruit, 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 pulp that I found in the freezer area of Whole Foods, but if you can find the pink pitaya fresh in your area, grab it up!
I can find the dragonfruits 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 vegan frosting.
And now that I worked out the amounts regarding fruit and sugar, I will start subbing other fruit to make other color frostings – maybe mango for yellow, kiwi for green, blueberries for blue and carrots (why not?) for orange! The secret to a smoothie color is in the puree.
And I made these cuppies even more special today by popping out the center and stuffing them with vanilla icing.
Kind of an icing overload here.
Now, I’m not kidding myself that because I use organic sugar and fruit to color that this frosting is healthy. Nope, sugar is sugar and needs to be eaten in moderation.
And that’s why when I make cupcakes, I make sure at least the cake is very healthy.
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.
I hope you enjoy my colorful buttercream recipe!
Fruit-colored Vegan Buttercream Frosting
Delicious fruit-colored frosting, vegan and dairy-free
Both colored and white recipes are provided, each recipe produces about 2 cups of icing
Ingredients
Fruit-Colored Icing (Dragonfruit)
- 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar, vegan means no bone-char (I use this brand)
- 1/2 cup vegan butter, melted
- 2-3 tbsp plant milk
- 3 tsp pink pitaya puree
Vanilla Icing
- 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar, vegan means no bone-char (I use this brand)
- 1/2 cup vegan butter, melted melted
- 3-5 tbsp plant milk
- 1 tsp Vanilla powder (I use this brand)
Instructions
Make Fruit puree
Make pitaya (dragonfruit) puree by adding 2 tsp of solid pink pitaya flesh to 1 tsp of water and wisk vigerously until the color is uniform (no dark pink dots remain)
Make fruit-colored frosting
- Add the powdered sugar to a large bowl.
- Melt the butter in a microwave and pour into bowl with sugar
- Add 2 tbsp plant milk and the pitaya puree.
- Blend or hand-mix until creamy, adding in more plant milk by the tsp until you reach a texture you want - either stiff for piping or creamy for spreading.
Make white frosting (I used it to stuff the cupcake center)
- Add the powdered sugar to a large bowl.
- Melt the butter in a microwave and pour into bowl
- Add 3 tbsp plant milk.
- Blend or hand-mix until creamy, adding in more plant milk by the tsp until you reach a texture you want - either stiff for piping or creamy for spreading.
Stuff your Cupcakes
Take an icing tip and push the wide end (not the decorative tip) into the top of a cooled cupcake. Pull out and a core of cake should come out with it. Or if it doesn't come out, it's cut out so work out the cake with a small spoon.
Pipe icing into the center cavity you just created, and ice the top of the cupcake.
Enjoy!
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