the best dairy-free cream cheese frosting

In all of the years I’ve been eating, baking, and creating gluten-free and paleo recipes, I’ve never really gone dairy-free for any length of time. I tolerate dairy pretty well, and I just freaking love it. And honestly I think it’s the hardest thing to sub! But I know that a lot of my readers are dairy-free, and don’t have a choice in the matter. So for you, my beloved DF readers – I whipped up some dairy-free cream cheese frosting.

dairy-free cream cheese frosting is easy and only requires a few ingredients.

I made this frosting for the pumpkin spice cupcakes I made this week. I was really happy with how it came out, with one caveat: It will melt in the heat so needs to stay cool until serving. That doesn’t mean it melts as soon as it comes out of the fridge, don’t worry.

In fact, I did a little experiment: I put a dollop of cold frosting on a plate in my kitchen to see how long it took for it to lose its shape. After 15 minutes at room temp, it was the perfect frosting consistency. At 30 minutes, it was very soft but still held its shape. It wasn’t until 45 minutes that I’d start to worry about it sliding off a cupcake.

So: If you’re planning on serving these at a party, just keep the cupcakes or whatever is frosted in the fridge until you’re ready to serve, and you’ll have a good window for people to gobble them up. When do cupcakes last longer than 45 minutes, anyway?

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Want to pipe your frosting but don’t have a piping bag? No problem!

• Place a large zip-top bag in a mason jar or similar sized container with one of the corners facing down. Fold the overhang over the outside of the container.
• Use a rubber spatula to fill the bag, trying to drop it to the bottom as much as you can.
• Gather up the bag and push the contents towards the corner. Twist the top of the bag.
• Snip off the corner – start with a smaller snip than you think you need! You can always make it larger but you can’t make it smaller.

A note about ingredients: All dairy-free products are different, so I can’t promise results with any other than what I used, which was Miyoko’s vegan butter and cream cheese. This post is not sponsored, I’m just happy to send them some love and tell you all about them, because they’re the best dairy-free options I’ve tried!

what are you going to put your dairy-free cream cheese frosting on? Here are some ideas:

• really excellent carrot cake
• banana snacking cake (instead of the caramel glaze)
• paleo + vegan + nut-free chocolate cupcakes

I absolutely love the addition of orange zest in this frosting for the pumpkin cupcakes and things like carrot cake. If frosting anything chocolate, I’d use vanilla extract.

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