Perfect Vegan Royal Icing with Aquafaba

Using just aquafaba (chickpea brine) and powdered sugar, you can create the most perfect vegan royal icing that decorates and sets just like the classic- SO easy and no raw eggs required!

The only vegan royal icing recipe that you’ll need

So you have your favorite go-to vegan sugar cookie recipe. But of course, now you need to decorate them!

This is truly the only vegan royal icing recipe you need – it’s just 2 ingredients that are probably already in your pantry (a can of chickpeas and powdered sugar), and it can be used for more than just simply icing a sugar cookie or gingerbread cookie (I’m looking at you, homemade vegan gingerbread house!).

No agave, no corn syrup, nor even any powders. This royal icing sets beautifully and is so easy to use.

In this post, we’ll go over how to beautiful decorate vegan sugar cookies so that they look professional, along with what colors to use for vegan-friendly cookies, and the different styles of vegan royal icing you need.

Simple ingredients:

I think you’ll be shocked at how easy and effective this vegan royal icing is.

All you need are two ingredients:

• Vegan powdered sugar
• Aquafaba (drained from a can of chickpeas- save the chickpeas for salads, or flourless chickpea brownies!)

You can also add in vanilla extract for flavoring, but that’s optional.

A note on the aquafaba: there is some confusion as to whether or not aquafaba is bad for you. While it’s a great vegan egg replacement, some worry that coming from a can, it might not be the best. I like to get my aquafaba from jarred chickpeas, to avoid any chance of a BPA-lined can. You can also make your own aquafaba.

For our purposes, using aquafaba is totally fine. It’s not like you’re drinking it from the can, and the amount we’re using is fairly minuscule in comparison.

Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, you’ll begin to make the vegan royal icing.

Decorating tools:

In order to decorate sugar cookies, you’ll need a few things to start:

• Your favorite vegan sugar cookie recipe (I have one that no one will know is vegan!)
• Cookie cutters (think snowman shapes, snowflakes, Santa hats, reindeer, stars, and the like!)
• Vegan royal icing
• Piping bags & tips (though to make the cookies picture, I didn’t use any piping tips!)
• Toothpick
• Vegan-friendly colors (more on that below)
• Vegan-friendly sprinkles

Once you’ve gathered your supplies, it’s time to decorate the cookies!

2 Key Consistencies for Piping Royal Icing:

There are two types of consistencies desired for decorating sugar cookies with royal icing. The first is to make the border of icing and decorate, and the other is to flood a large portion of the sugar cookie.

Border & decorating consistency is a thicker vegan royal icing; it doesn’t drip too easily from the spoon (it moves very slow), but is moveable and easily piped. This type of vegan royal icing will be used to create the border of your sugar cookies.

Flooding consistency easily drips off the spoon, is slightly runny, but isn’t watered down looking. It easily floods the middle of the cookie after the borders have set. You can achieve this by adding another tablespoon of aquafaba or drops of water. I recommend keeping some icing for decorating after you’ve created your border before you make your flooding royal icing.

How long does royal icing take to set?

Much like traditional royal icing made from egg whites or meringue powder, you’ll need about 8 hours (or overnight) in a cool, dry area for the icing to really harden and not be breakable.

You can, of course, enjoy the cookies right away- the first layer of hardened sugar will appear about 15 minutes after decorating. But if you’re looking to store these cookies in a cookie box, then I recommend waiting the full 8 hours!

Can I refrigerate or freeze the royal icing to speed up the timing?

Nope- this will throw off moisture levels in the icing, and may make them bleed and dry weirdly. Patience is key!

Vegan food coloring ideas

The struggle with vegan sugar cookie decorating is that not all food colorings on the market are vegan.

In fact, most aren’t. You’ll have to look for specific brands. I personally use Ann Clark’s gel food colorings. They’re vegan certified. You can also use Go Supernatural! It’s made from beets, turmeric, and purple cabbage for the colors.

Other ideas for adding color to your vegan sugar cookies:

• Using food powders: such as turmeric, beet, matcha, blue spirulina, etc. Brands like Love Beets, Suncore Foods, and Bare Organics sells many wonderful powders that can double as vegan food coloring
• Vegan gel food coloring: the Whole Foods 365 brand is a gel food coloring, but there are others on the market. Personally, some of them run a bit expensive, so I don’t find it worth it, especially if you’re new to decorating. Nomeca also makes some wonderful vegan-friendly food coloring gels (at the time that I’m writing this- sometimes brands change formulas, but at the current moment, they are considered vegan!).

Keep in mind that when you’re decorating your sugar cookies, you’ll need a border consistency and a flooding consistency for each color! Start with the border, then once all borders are added, you can make a flooding icing from each border icing.

That way, you’ll save bowls and have a neater workspace!

How to decorate sugar cookies

Now for the best part: decorating the vegan sugar cookies!

Before we begin:

Make sure that the vegan sugar cookies are completely cool to touch. If they are not cool, then the vegan royal icing won’t set, and it will run everywhere.

You can cool the cookies faster by placing them onto a cooling rack and into the fridge to chill for a few minutes.

Once cool, let’s begin!

Create the border:

You’ll start by piping the border around the sugar cookie. Keep in mind that if you’re doing different colors, like white for the snowman body and blue for the snow man hat, you’ll need two border royal icing colors.

For the piping bag, I actually recommend not using a piping tip. You’ll get a cleaner line if you just fill the piping bag and snip the end of the bag.

Flood the sugar cookies:

Once you’ve allowed the border of the cookies to dry (about 10-15 minutes), then you’ll flood the cookies.

Make the second type of consistency for vegan royal icing that we discussed in the beginning of the post and pipe only a little of the vegan royal icing to start into the middle of the flooding area.

Use a toothpick to push the icing to the edges of the border and fill any gaps.

Add sprinkles and decorate with more piping of royal icing!

Only if desired! This is the time to add on top any fun holiday-themed vegan-friendly sprinkles. Sweetapolita has some wonderful vegan-friendly holiday sprinkles that I recommend checking out!

Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!

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