A fluffy white frosting recipe with the light bakery-style crunch, healthier, and made bright white thanks to a whitening trick, and made with 3 simple ingredients including a healthier one, to make the perfect sweet piping frosting.
My fluffy healthy white frosting that tastes incredible, and pipes onto cupcakes and cakes like a perfect dream, leaving a tiny crunchy surface just like bakery frosting. It's perfect on my fluffy vegan vanilla cake or my healthy chocolate cake, or even as the filling in my cream-filled hot chocolate cupcakes.
And this vanilla frosting is extremely fluffy, easy to pipe and melts in your mouth thanks to my whipping technique. It's healthier thanks to a healthier shortening, and it is bright white in color despite the addition of yellow butter and brown vanilla extract because of a special trick I'll share with you.
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Why You'll Love This Recipe
A bakery light frosting. This frosting recipe creates an old fashioned bakery texture two ways: (1) ensuring ingredients are at room temperature, and (2) whipping it with a mixer for a minimum of 2 minutes. Both factors allow air to be incorporated, resulting in a light and fluffy texture with a light crisp coating.
It has nutritious for a frosting. This frosting uses a healthy shortening made of healthy fats, including coconut oil and red palm oil. Coconut oil benefits are well-known, and red palm oil is considered to be a strong antioxidant that protects against disease and has other skin and heart benefits. [source]
Fits all diet types. This frosting is naturally dairy-free, vegan and gluten-free.
It's an exceptionally delicious frosting. That's because of the combination of the palm oil shortening and organic powdered sugar. Organic powdered sugar makes frostings taste so much better than those made from regular powdered sugar in that it contains tapioca instead of corn starch found in most commercial powdered sugars. I challenge you to try it!
Ingredients
Organic Powdered Sugar: As I noted above, this sugar contains tapioca instead of corn starch found in most commercial powdered sugars, and it tastes so much better that you might want to always buy organic. My favorite brand is Wholesome.
Butter: This butter provides half the fat and I normally use vegan Earth Balance sticks. Be sure to allow the sticks to be at room temperature before use; this takes about two hours or overnight.
Organic Plant-based Shortening: The other half of the fat portion is shortening. Not the white lard-based shortening such as Crisco however. Look for Spectrum or Nutiva brands.
They both produce plant-based shortenings containing the healthier red palm oil. In my fudge frosting, I Nutiva's whose shortening is a mix of red palm oil and coconut oil. It's delicious, but it is yellow, so works best for a chocolate frosting as it discolors white frosting. For this white frosting, I use Spectrum's shortening, made of palm oil and white.
See the recipe card at the bottom for full information on ingredients and quantities.
Steps to Make
For more detail, visit the complete and printable recipe at the bottom of this post, but here are general steps.
1. Be sure butter, shortening and milk are all at room temperature.
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2. Add all ingredients, except half the milk, to a bowl and hand mix until combined. Add the rest of the milk or more to reach the texture you want. Mix again only just enough to combine.
3. Add a tiny amount - only ¼ of a drop - of blue food using the method I describe in FAQS below on how to make your buttercream bright white.
4. Now it is time to mix the frosting for a solid 2 minutes to incorporate air and achieve an old fashioning fluffy texture.
4. Store your white frosting in a sealed container for two weeks in the refrigerator.
What to Use White Frosting On?
I used it on my healthy chocolate cake, my hot chocolate cupcakes, my vegan vanilla cupcakes, my dairy free chocolate cake and my fluffy vanilla cake as well. As I mentioned, it pipes beautifully and holds the shape overnight or longer.
Substitutions
There aren't a lot of swaps here. I suppose you could use all butter instead of using any shortening but then you won't have the lovely light bakery frosting crunch on the surface, or the rich flavor.
How to Store
This frosting can be refrigerated for 2 weeks in a sealed container, or frozen for 3 months. However, keep frosted cupcakes or cakes on the counter at room temperature for about 24 hours. After that, refrigerate them.
Recipe Tips
This recipe makes enough frosting to frost about 18 cupcakes or 1 (2-layer) cake.
Make this frosting 2 weeks in advance and keep it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. To frost, let the frosting reach room temperature, about 10 minutes, before frosting.
FAQS
Shortening, butter and vanilla can add a yellow tinge, so to whiten your frosting, smear a speck - like ¼ of a drop - of blue food coloring into the frosting. The key is not to add more than a teeeny speck. Put a drop of food coloring on a teaspoon and then dip a corner of a paper towel to wipe ¾ of it off the spoon. Then I dip the spoon with leftover food coloring into the frosting.
It's very easy to make this white frosting. Just put all ingredients in a bowl, mostly sugar, butter, shortening and mix and you have frosting.
Thicken frosting by adding powdered sugar or even tapioca or arrowroot.
Any frosting made with shortening can seem a bit grainy if you don't mix it enough.
Other Frosting Recipes
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📖 Recipe
Fluffy White Frosting
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter (I use vegan Earth Balance sticks)
- ½ cup organic shortening (Spectrum (white) or Nutiva (yellow) - Both contain healthier organic red palm oil)
- 4 cups organic powdered sugar
- 3-4 tablespoon dairy free milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
to whiten the frosting
- ¼ drop blue food coloring*
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Instructions
Prep
- Set the butter out to allow it to reach room temperature overnight or at least two hours before using. Make sure shortening and milk are also at room temperature.½ cup butter
Make Frosting
- Put all ingredients - except hold back 2 tablespoons of milk - in a large bowl and use a hand-mixer to mix the frosting until ingredients are just combined. Add the 2+ tablespoons of milk if needed to get the texture you want. Up until now, your whipping is only to combine, not to fluff.½ cup organic shortening, 4 cups organic powdered sugar, 3-4 tablespoon dairy free milk, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, ¼ teaspoon salt
Make color bright white
- To make your frosting bright white, put a drop of blue food coloring on a spoon. Use a tissue corner to absorb nearly ¾ of it off. You want only the tiniest smear of blue to remove the yellow tinge and make your frosting bright white. Repeat as needed.¼ drop blue food coloring*
- Once you have achieved the color you want, make the frosting exceptionally fluffy by whipping it two minutes.
Store
- To keep the frosting wet until you are ready to frost your cake, put a soaking wet paper towel over the bowl. This will keep the frosting soft for an hour if you keep the paper towel wet so plan your baking around this window.
- Store this frosting in a sealed container in the refrigerator for two weeks. To use it, let it sit at room temperature until it is soft, about 5 minutes. Stir or even whip again briefly if needed for texture.
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