Aquafaba Swiss Buttercream Recipe - Gretchen's Vegan Bakery (2024)

FAQs

Why is my vegan buttercream grainy? ›

It's essential to sieve your icing sugar (aka confectioners sugar) before adding to the softened butter, so do this first. Then you're going to add little by little to the vegan buttercream frosting, beating between additions. This again stops the buttercream from splitting or becoming grainy.

The Cons of Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

Special equipment makes the job easier. A candy thermometer, stand mixer, and a double boiler really help. You can break your SMBC by adding too much liquid. Breaking means it turns soupy.

Your ingredients were too cold or too hot

If you use vegan butter straight from the fridge, you might end up with small lumps of it throughout your buttercream. This can also happen if you add cold (vegan) milk at the end. Similarly, adding fat or milk that is too warm can cause buttercream to curdle.

I recommend Miyoko's vegan butter for the best all around vegan butter. for a nut-free vegan butter option. Other great options include Flora Plant Butter, and Earth Balance. More on which butter brand to use below!

What are good vegan butter substitutes? In baking, you can use vegan butter, applesauce, dairy-free yogurt, coconut oil, coconut butter, olive oil, nut butter, mashed banana and mashed avocado. In cooking, you can use olive oil, coconut oil, vegetable stock, or avocado oil to replace butter.

When the frosting's temperature drops below 69°F (21°C), its butter content will stiffen, bit by bit, until the frosting breaks into a curdled mess. But between those extremes, when the butter is pliable but cool, the frosting will be silky and light—perfect for spreading over your favorite cake.

This happens if you add cold butter (or even butter that still holds a chill) to your room temperature meringue mixture. The more butter you add the more 'split' it will look with the butter forming small lumps throughout the mixture. It will also lose all its initial volume and become quite 'wet'.

Swiss meringue buttercream is probably the most standard buttercream for pastry professionals. It is incredibly smooth, making it an extremely popular choice for icing cakes.

Yes. Swiss meringue buttercream can be whipped for too long. This usually happens when the mixture becomes too cool, and it will start to look curdled and greasy. To fix this, simply place the bowl of buttercream over a pot of simmering water for a few seconds at a time, mixing constantly.

If yours tastes like you're eating a stick of butter, perhaps your meringue wasn't whipped to stiff peaks before adding butter, or the butter was too cold, in which case it just needs some more whipping. Or you added too much butter.

How do you keep vegan buttercream from melting? ›

The buttercream will be fine at room temperature on the counter, but if it is hotter than normal, or the cake is still warm, the buttercream will melt. So make sure your cakes are fully cooled before icing them and your kitchen isn't toasty.

The buttercream frosting can stay out at room temperature for a few hours without melting, so you can leave decorated cakes/cupcakes out. However, if it's too hot, the frosting will start to melt.

The two main differences between traditional and dairy-free buttercream frosting are: The dairy butter is replaced with vegan butter. The whipping cream or milk is replaced with non-dairy milk.

Coconut oil is a delicious vegan alternative to butter as it behaves similarly to butter compared to other oils. It solidifies when cool and melts at room temperature, making it very versatile. If you use unrefined coconut oil, you can expect a more distinctive taste, but refined coconut oil is basically flavourless.

Kerrygold, Organic Valley, and other European styles unsalted butter are great to the taste of buttercream too.

The short answer is while there is no exact rule for substituting the fats in your recipes, you'll likely be able to use butter or shortening as a one-to-one swap for margarine.