How to Make Icing Without Butter (11 Delicious Recipes!)

Cream cheese is an excellent no butter frosting ingredient swap (though a traditional version does include butter). It has a smooth and creamy consistency, and it goes without saying that cream cheese frosting has quite a well-deserved following. 

Boasting of a tangy undertone, cream cheese frosting helps balance the sweetness of many baked items and sweets. You’ll see this type of butter-free icing being used in sticky buns, carrot cakes, red velvet cupcakes, whoopie pies, pumpkin tortes, blondie bars, boxed brownies and more. 

Angel food cakes, whoopie pies, and chocolate sour cream cakes all benefit from a delicious fluffy pile of vanilla-laced cream frosting. This recipe is no exception, as it's simple enough to create from scratch, making it exactly the icing without the butter you're looking for. 

Just ensure it'll hold its shape by adding a stabilizer, and avoid that gritty texture (from over-whipping) or weird aftertaste from some whipped cream brands.  

Like whipped cream frosting, coconut whipped cream is created in the same way, as it's whipped until the texture is stable. It's a light and fluffy topping that's completely dairy-free, with a distinct coconut taste.

Since the flavor will come out in your dessert, you can pair them with rich-tasting ingredients such as cacao or other fruit-based desserts. Coconut cream frosting is highly versatile and can be your go-to icing without butter recipe, if you can handle the tropical flavor.  

This recipe is a classic vanilla buttercream that uses vegan butter and non-dairy milk in place of the traditional dairy ingredients. Despite the substitutions, this recipe is fluffy, smooth, and flavorful, just like a typical buttercream. 

The ideal whipped vanilla frosting has a smooth, silky texture that retains its shape. While that sounds challenging, it’s not hard to achieve; it’ll keep its shape and sit prettily on top of your cake. You can design your cake to perfection with this dairy-free vanilla buttercream frosting.

This is a fantastic chocolate whipped cream frosting that will be mighty popular for all the chocolate lovers out there - it's deliciously fluffy and chocolatey, but not too much, so it compliments the richness of chocolate cake.

This recipe is also fully customizable, as you can increase that rich chocolate flavor by adding more Dutch-processed (instead of natural) cocoa powder, adding extra ingredients, and performing one extra step to achieve a more stable chocolate whipped cream.

There's no better 2-ingredient cake icing than a delicious chocolate ganache. It's simple to make just like a chocolate dipping sauce, but you take it a step further by refrigerating and then whisking it until light and smooth. 

The richness of your whipped ganache will depend on good quality craft chocolate or the type of chocolate that you opt to use, so keep that in mind. You can even use ruby chocolate if you want to make it a pretty pinkish frosting, blonde chocolate for a caramel-like light brown chocolate frosting, or white chocolate for a pale yellow hue.

You can also, of course, skip the last step and keep the ganache unwhipped. It will still make a good, stable filling for your truffles and coating for your basic cakes. Finishing the entire process will yield you a fluffier frosting so choose your texture as you wish.

If you're making something like chocolate cupcakes but can't take the butter in traditional frosting, then you may want a healthier recipe like this chocolate avocado frosting.

In this creamy chocolate frosting, you’ll use a sugar alternative - maple syrup - and cocoa powder to mask the taste of the avocado, with sea salt balancing out the chocolate and the overall flavor of the frosting. Lather some on your fave low-cal chocolate snacks for a healthy afternoon delight. 

Try to whip up this luscious vegan chocolate frosting, perfect for any vegan chocolate cake or cupcake. It's rich and creamy with a lusciously thick texture despite swapping out the dairy and butter for vegan replacements. 

This chocolate buttercream will have even the most health-conscious person scraping off the icing before devouring the cake. With a rich milk chocolate buttercream flavor, this recipe is definitely for keeps!

If you're not a fan of butter or just can't have it, marshmallow icing is another great no-butter frosting. It's basically egg whites fluffed up to stiff peaks, making them more spreadable and pipable for topping any baked goods. 

It also has more sheen than whipped cream frosting, for a glossier effect. Marshmallow icing goes well on not just cupcakes but your favorite hot chocolate or hot cocoa recipe, too. 

Peanut butter lovers can now rejoice, as this dairy-free frosting recipe will have you licking the spatula clean. It's an exquisite peanut butter frosting recipe, perfectly nutty and creamy from the soy milk, making for an excellent topping for cupcakes and brownies.