Vegan Lemon Buttercream Frosting

Creamy, dreamy, light, and fluffy vegan lemon buttercream frosting for cakes, cupcakes, macarons, and more.

This homemade buttercream recipe is easy to make and uses no lemon extract, just 100% fresh lemon juice and zest to get the best and freshest flavour. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know so you can make the freshest tasting dairy-free lemon icing you'll ever have!

If you love lemons and lemon-flavoured desserts, you NEED a recipe for vegan lemon buttercream in your collection. Because what’s a vegan lemon cake without vegan lemon frosting on top?!

This icing is sweet, tangy, and packed with lemon flavour, making it a delicious way to finish your favourite lemon desserts, from cakes and cupcakes to cookies and more.

It’s especially nice for spring, Easter, and Mother’s Day desserts, but there’s no reason to save it for a special occasion. Lemon desserts are welcome any time of year around here!

Let’s get into everything you need to know so you can make it, too.

Everything You'll Need

All you need is SIX simple ingredients, and you'll be 10 minutes away from the most delicious lemon frosting you've ever had!

A Few Quick Ingredient Notes

(NOTE: Only ingredients with special notes are listed below. The full ingredient list can be found in the recipe card.)

Vegan Powdered Sugar – Not all sugar is vegan, some are processed using animal bone char. If you can’t find any that are vegan, your best bet is to look for organic powdered sugar since organic sugar is always vegan. And note that “powdered sugar,” “confectioner’s sugar,” and “icing sugar” are all the same thing.

Lemon Juice - For the BEST flavour possible, use freshly squeezed lemon juice and not bottled lemon juice.

Lemon Zest - The same lemon you are going to use to squeeze the juice from, zest that lemon using a zester or a fine grater (and zest BEFORE you juice the lemon!). Don't skip this ingredient, it adds an extra "pop" of flavour to the buttercream and enhances the flavour even more.

Unsalted Vegan Butter – When making frosting with vegan butter, make sure you buy sticks, not butter in a container, since that type will make buttercream that's too soft. If you can, buy unsalted butter so you control the salt. If you can’t find unsalted butter, simply omit the salt the recipe calls for.

How to Make It

(Note: I’ve outlined the step-by-step on how to make this recipe here, but find the full recipe, ingredients, and directions at the end of this post.)

Start by whipping the butter and salt for a few minutes until the butter is soft and creamy.

Gradually add the powdered sugar and mix. Stop the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Want to Add Some Colour?

The finished frosting has a very subtle yellow tone to it, but if you want to make it darker, I suggest doing it in one of the following ways:

Ground Turmeric - This is the natural way to give your frosting a slight yellow colour, but you must be careful to not use too much so the flavour of the turmeric doesn't come through. Start with ⅛th of a teaspoon, and if that isn't yellow enough for you, add another ⅛th teaspoon for a total of ¼ teaspoon.

Food Colour Gel - This will give you the boldest and brightest colour. Two brands to check out are AmeriColor and Chefmaster. They're both vegan AND gluten-free.

With gels, the colours are more vibrant, so you’ll use less than if you were using water-based food colours to achieve the same result. Using gels instead of water-based food colour will also prevent your buttercream from thinning out.

Whichever option you choose, add it at the end after all the ingredients have been mixed into the buttercream.

Buttercream Troubles?

While mixing, if you notice that your frosting has split (it looks lumpy and a little separated), either your butter was too warm, your butter was too cold, or you measured your lemon juice incorrectly and added too much.

• To fix buttercream made with butter that was too warm: Put the bowl into the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes so everything can cool down. Remove it from the refrigerator and start mixing it again.
• To fix buttercream made with butter that was too cold: Let the bowl sit at room temperature to warm it up a little before moving forward.
• To fix buttercream that has too much lemon juice: Add more powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, until it firms back up and no longer looks separated.

If you prefer a thinner or thicker buttercream, those things are easy to fix, too:

• To fix buttercream that is too thick: Add more lemon juice, a little at a time until you get the consistency you want.
• To fix buttercream that is too thin: Add more powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, until it reaches the thickness you want.

Is it Grainy?

And finally, to avoid grainy buttercream, do the following:

• always use powdered sugar. Using any type of granulated sugar will result in a grainy buttercream.
• use room temperature lemon juice.
• sift your powdered sugar if it's lumpy. As powdered sugar sits, it can dry out and clump up

To fix graininess, you need to more moisture, so you can add a little room temperature non-dairy milk or more room temperature lemon juice to lighten it up and make it softer.

A Few Ways to Use It

One of the best ways to use it is as a vegan lemon cake frosting, of course! It would also work well on berry cakes.

It can also be used for macarons, whoopie pies, sugar cookies, sandwich cookies, and more.

A Few More Tips Before You Make It

• Measure and have all your ingredients ready to go before starting. This will make the process run smoothly, quickly, and easily.
• Measure your ingredients correctly. I highly recommend using a scale and my weight measurements. (See the "Suggested Equipment" section in the recipe card for the scale I use and recommend.)
• You can sift the powdered sugar if you’d like, but I usually don’t. I find that any small clumps are taken care of during mixing. However, if your powdered sugar is very dry and lumpy, definitely sift it before starting.
• Chill the buttercream for 15-20 minutes if you will be piping decorations onto a dessert to make it easier.
• Read this post from beginning to end before making the recipe, it contains lots of tips and tricks to make your coffee buttercream perfect, every single time!
• For the very best results, follow the recipe exactly as it’s written.

After You Make It...

After you make this plant-based buttercream recipe, please come back and let me know how things went by leaving a comment and star rating below. If you’re on Instagram, I’d love to see how you used the icing! Share a pic over there and tag me (@delightfuladventures).