frosting

American buttercream is a classic frosting that's known for its rich flavor and versatility. With this easy dairy-free version, you can create a white vanilla buttercream, or you can add colors to your liking. You can also add a variety of flavors to make it your own!

The best part of this frosting recipe is how easy it is to make. With just a few simple ingredients and a stand mixer (or electric hand mixer), you can have delicious vegan frosting in minutes.

I'll admit that these homemade brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts don't taste exactly like the original. But they do taste like what I always wished the brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts tasted like. While the original crust was underwhelming (am I the only one who used to break off the edges just to get to the filling?), the flaky crust in this recipe is flavorful and delicious.

The biggest challenge in this recipe was the filling. Other recipes all seem to use very similar fillings which lack flavor, and get hard and chewy when they cool a little. But this filling tastes perfect, and even better, it stays soft and moist when it cools. (A combination of vegan butter and coconut cream is the secret!)

Sometimes, I create a recipe, and even I can't believe how amazing it turned out. This frosting is one of those recipes.

As I've mentioned in previous recipes, I used to have a cupcake business many years ago. I've been (slowly) working on creating vegan versions of my old recipes. When I created my vegan carrot cake recipe, I wondered how I was going to recreate a cream cheese frosting to go with it. I wanted to avoid using store-bought non-dairy cream cheese because they vary so widely in their taste and ingredients.

Some of my favorite childhood Christmas memories are of the holiday cookies. Each member of my dad's side of the family would make one or two types of cookies each year and bring them to my grandmother's house. In the basement were two long folding tables with endless tins of cookies of all types. After dinner, my grandmother would let us go downstairs and pick whatever Christmas cookies we wanted.

We also got to participate in making some of the cookies. As children, that usually meant roll-out sugar cookies that we got to decorate.

A few weeks ago, I woke up with three words in my head: cookie butter frosting. I'm not saying that God herself tasked me with making a vegan recipe for cake frosting for you. But I'm also not saying that she didn't.

For those of you who don't know, I used to sell cupcakes many years ago. So veganizing my cupcake recipes has been on my to-do list for a while. But cookie butter frosting wasn't ever on my radar. I've seen some recipes for traditional (non-vegan) cookie butter frosting, but so far I haven't seen any vegan ones!