Are you ready for it?
“It” being: the best freakin’ cream cheese frosting ever, vegan or not. Ommmmg.
This may just be one of my favorite recipes ever. I don’t think you understand just how much I love and adore cream cheese frosting.
Like, so much. Because most of my favorite cake recipes (red velvet, carrot, pumpkin roll) are piled high with the stuff.
At first I thought I could just use vegan substitutes of two of the four main ingredients (butter and cream cheese) to make an epic vegan cream cheese frosting.
Omg. No. Not even sorta.
Vegan cream cheese isn’t great. At least the vegan cream cheese that I bought at the store wasn’t great. I don’t know if it had gone bad or what but MAN. It was so so gross. No amount of powdered sugar could make that situation okay. None.
Frosting, meet trash. You two will be very happy together.
SO! We needed a new combo of ingredients that would give us a creamy, tangy, sweet, and swirlable frosting, fit for any vegan cake situation it meets.
And friends? We’ve done it. It tastes exactly like the OG cream cheese frosting we all know and love, all while using real ingredients like cashews, lemon juice, almond milk, and vanilla.
I’m just totally flipping over this and you need to make it asap.
So how do we make it? It’s slightly high maintenance, but only slightly. It requires a high-powered blender to pulverize those cashew pieces, and a stand mixer (or hand mixer) to mix in the powdered sugar.
Just…trust me. It’s worth it. Like 100x over.
The ingredient amounts are key, both for texture and flavor. One pro tip that I absolutely, positively wouldn’t stray away from? Measure your apple cider vinegar like…in a completely different zip code than the one you’re mixing the rest of the ingredients in.
Why? Have you ever tried vinegar frosting before? No? There’s a reason for that. And it’s also in my trash.
Even the smallest amount of extra vinegar can turn your sweet tangy frosting into a vinegary mess of a mixture. Just…measure it far away from your blender and then carefully pour in the exact 2 tsp. the recipe calls for.
Capiche?
Another thing? Be ready to scrape down the sides of your blender…a lot. We want this mixture thicccc. That means that you’ll need to take your time blending and scraping until the mixture is smooth.
Patience is a virtue frequently lost on me, but here it’s key. Just remember creamy, dreamy frosting is our end-goal, so like, patience is almost worth it.
Oh man oh man. I’m sure you won’t need any help finding ways to use this vegan cream cheese frosting, but if you need some help, don’t you worry. I’ll have some inspo for ya next week. (hint: ???)
A perfect practice of patience. You can do it. Just one week stands between you and a vegan, fall, cream-cheesy treat heaven.
PrintDreamy Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting
A super simple vegan frosting recipe made from whole foods like cashews, lemon juice, and almond milk! Use it on your favorite vegan cake!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: ~3 cups
- Category: frosting
- Method: blender
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/2 cups cashews
- 5 Tbsp. non-dairy milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)
- 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
- 3–4 Tbsp. lemon juice
- salt
- 1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions
- Add your cashews to a medium bowl and cover with boiling water for 20 minutes. Drain well.
- Add your drained cashews to a high-powered blender with your milk, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, and a small pinch of salt. Blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. The mixture will be very thick.
- Transfer your mixture to the bowl of your stand mixer and place in the fridge to cool for 10 minutes.
- Add your powdered sugar and vanilla extract, and beat with the paddle attachment until combined and smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Eat with a spoon or with your favorite vegan cake!
Since I do not have a high speed to use, would cashew butter work instead of trying to use not-smooth cashews?
Ooh…it might! The proportions might need to be tweaked a bit, depending on how drippy your cashew butter is.
This sounds delicious, but we have a severe cashew not allergy in our house. Any ideas on what we could substitute for the cashews?
Maybe blanched almonds?
This looks delicious! I plan on trying it next week. Do you know if it freezes well by any chance? I’ll usually freeze cake leftovers.
Ohhh man. I have no idea! Initial guess is that it would be fine in the freezer!
Just made this tonight. I actually used my food processor because my blender’s not high speed. I soaked the cashews in boiling water first. It worked great. I added the sugar and vanilla right in the food processor. No problem.
One thing I will say… Despite your thing about not adding more vinegar… I added more vinegar! Because I wanted more tartness like real cream cheese. I just kept adding to the food processor until it tasted like cream cheese to me, so I have no idea how much it ended up being. The frosting is delicious. To me anyway. Everyone’s taste buds are different. ?
I used it on orange olive oil cake. A perfect combo.
YAY!! So glad this turned out – even with the extra vinegar. :) Thanks for reporting back!