Vegan royal icing, easy, sweet, and creamy. You can use it to decorate your vegan sugar cookies. It's ready in 10 minutes with 4 ingredients!
Are you ready to decorate your vegan sugar cookies with this wonderful vegan royal icing? It is super easy to prepare and it only requires 4 simple ingredients. One of the simplest recipes that'll make your desserts super fancy!
To make it you only need 10 minutes of your time and the key ingredient is aquafaba. You really need to try this recipe - especially now that Christmas is around the corner!
Shor video of this recipe
How to make vegan royal icing
- Drain the liquid from a can of chickpeas into a large bowl and set the chickpeas aside. You’re going to need only 2 tbsp or 30 ml.
- Add the aquafaba to an electric mixer bowl (photo 1) and beat on high speed until the mixture is fluffy and stiff peaks form (photo 2).
- Incorporate all the remaining ingredients (photo 3) and blend again until smooth and well combined (photo 4). If you’re not going to use gel food coloring, your vegan royal icing will probably be too thick, so add 1-2 tablespoon of unsweetened plant milk of your choice (photo 5) until you get the desired consistency (photo 6) .
- Use your vegan royal icing immediately to decorate your vegan sugar cookies.
Ingredients and tips
- Aquafaba: I’ve only used the liquid of canned chickpeas, not the liquid from cooking chickpeas myself, so I don’t know if this vegan royal icing will work with homemade aquafaba.
- Vanilla extract: I always use homemade vanilla extract, as it’s more affordable and extremely easy to make, but the store-bought version is also a good choice.
- Powdered sugar: you can either use it store-bought or make it yourself in about 2 minutes with just 2 simple ingredients.
- Gel food coloring: this ingredient is optional. Make sure you’re using vegan gel food coloring.
What is aquafaba?
If you’re wondering what is aquafaba, it is actually the liquid that you can find in almost any can of legumes, especially chickpeas.
Its slimy texture is similar to egg whites and it’s completely cholesterol-free! In fact, it is the key ingredient of this vegan royal icing.
What is royal icing?
Royal icing is a type of icing that has a thick and creamy texture when you make it but that hardens once it dries. It is usually made with egg whites or meringue powder, but I do believe using aquafaba is the best option.
How to store royal icing
This vegan royal icing can be easily stored. Just keep the leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or in the fridge for up to 1 week. It will dry, so blend again before using.
Looking for more how-to recipes?
- Vegan Marshmallows
- Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting
- Coconut Whipped Cream
- Vegan Whipped Cream
- Vegan Buttercream Frosting
Did you make this vegan royal icing?
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Vegan Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon aquafaba, the liquid from a can of chickpeas
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- Gel food coloring, optional, you can use 1-2 tablespoon or unsweetened plant milk of your choice instead (I used soy milk)
Instructions
- Drain the liquid from a can of chickpeas into a large bowl and set the chickpeas aside to make any recipe that calls for chickpeas. You’re going to need only 2 tablespoon or 30 ml.
- Add the aquafaba to an electric mixer bowl and beat on high speed until the mixture is fluffy and stiff peaks form (about 3-5 minutes). You could also use a regular large bowl and a hand mixer.Â
- Incorporate all the remaining ingredients and blend again until smooth and well combined. If you’re not going to use gel food coloring, your vegan royal icing will probably be too thick, so add 1- 2 tablespoon of unsweetened plant milk of your choice until you get the desired consistency. If you use gel food coloring and your vegan royal icing is also too thick, add a little bit of milk until you get the proper consistency, but keep in mind that the icing has to be thick to solidify when you decorate the cookies. If your icing is too thin, add a little more powdered sugar.
- Use immediately to decorate cookies like vegan sugar cookies.
- Keep the leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or in the fridge for up to 1 week. It will dry, so blend again before using.
Notes
- What is aquafaba? Aquafaba is the liquid that you can find in almost any can of legumes, especially chickpeas. Its slimy texture is similar to egg whites, and this is why it is a great alternative for making vegan whipped cream. It’s completely cholesterol-free!
- I really suggest you use chickpea aquafaba instead of the ones that come from other legumes, as this vegan royal icing will work best with it.
- Make sure you’re using vegan gel food coloring.Â
Tara says
First off- I'm an absolute beginner with royal icing so please take this review with the deserving grain of salt. I watched videos on youtube to learn the basic icing techniques and vocab. Yesterday was the first day I made and used royal icing to decorate cookies.
The whisk of my stand mixer wouldn't touch the 2 tbsp of aquafaba in the bottom of the bowl. I quadrupled it (to a 1/2 cup) to get enough in there to work up. It might be because the amount was then too much, but, mixing for 5 minutes on high made it foamy but not as meringued as I think it was meant to be. I then dumped most of it back out into another container before adding the sugar.
I don't know if it's because of the dry climate I'm in or if because of the problems in the previous step, but, when I added the sugar and vanilla, it was way too dry and hard to mix. I added back some of the aquafaba a little at a time to soften it and ended up using it all back in to get the right consistency.
I divided the resulting icing to make colors. I didn't add any milk or coloring to the white and added a bit of gel to make the other colors. This formula worked pretty well as both an outline and flood (with a little smoothing out) and I didn't notice a big difference between the white and other colors. I will probably use this recipe again and continue to adjust if needed.
Iosune says
Hi Tara! You could try to use a hand mixer instead, that way you can follow the recipe to the T, and it will work just fine 🙂