Don’t have time to read? Here’s a quick summary of the products we recommend.
| Product Name | Grade |
| Pillsbury Milk Chocolate (no real milk) | A+ |
| Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate | A+ |
| Fat Daddio’s True Blue Vanilla | A |
This guide was created for you! You’ll learn:
- What are some vegan frosting brands you can get online.
- Is frosting usually vegan?
- What to look for when shopping for frosting in the store.
- Is it healthy just because it’s vegan?
List of Vegan Frosting Brands
If you’re too busy to run to the store or interested in getting some of the specialty vegan frostings, we’ve compiled them below. The two popular brands (Pillsbury and Duncan Hines) are likely to be found in your grocery store, so you can add them to your shopping vegan list if you’re running out.
We wanted to give a little disclaimer though: if the product isn’t specifically advertised as Vegan (such as the Dollop brand), the company could change their ingredient statement at any time to something non-vegan, so we always recommend double checking!
Anyway, onto the frostings!
Dollop Frostings
Dollop is a new range of gourmet frosting that is all advertised vegan.
- Hot Chocolate
- Madagascar Vanilla
- Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
- Sea Slated Caramel
If you’re familiar with this frosting brand its because it was on Shark Tank! It was presented to the Sharks as a healthier version of frosting and was actually fought over among Kevin and Barbara. Barbara ended up making a deal with the owner, Heather Saffer, and the rest is history!
Pillsbury Milk Chocolate (no real milk)
You probably know Pillsbury – their frostings are found just about everywhere, and come in as many flavors as you could wish.
Here are some other vegan flavors you should be able to find…
- Lime
- Caramel
- Strawberry
- Aqua Blue Vanilla Funfetti
- Hot Pink Vanilla Funfetti
- Bold Purple Vanilla Funfetti
- Vanilla Funfetti
- Stars and Stripe Funfetti
- Vanilla Marshmallow Fluffy
- Chocolate Marshmallow Fluffy
- Funfetti Vanilla Marshmallow Fluffy
Obviously, all of these ranges have more products that aren’t listed here; these are just the most popular.
Be sure to double check Pillsbury frostings before buying, because they certainly aren’t a vegan company.
Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate
Check out this vegan starter kit
Duncan Hines is another well-known frosting brand and, like Pillsbury, almost all of their products are vegan.
Again, just be sure when buying these products that you check the ingredients – they can change at any time and Duncan Hines isn’t a vegan specific brand.
Some other flavors you might find…
- Salted Caramel
- Classic Vanilla
- Coconut Pecan
- Cream Cheese (no actual milk)
Fat Daddio’s True Blue Vanilla
There’s also Fat Daddio’s, which is an advertised vegan fondant – so it’s unlikely to change ingredients.
- True Blue Vanilla
- Green Vanilla
- Turquoise Vanilla
- Light Blue Vanilla
- Light Green Vanilla
How to Find Frostings in the Store
There are few brands that can be found in stores that are specifically vegan. You can find Dollop at Whole Foods and certain other health food stores. Fat Daddio’s has a wider range of colors than available online, and is found throughout specialty baking stores across the country.
For accidentally vegan options, the two best brands are Pillsbury and Duncan Hines – they have even more flavors than are listed above, though as mentioned you’ll need to check the ingredients in person each time you buy, because it’s likely that they could change. Duncan Hines is found at Vons, Ralph’s Target as well as any of the big retailers. Pillsbury is similar and will likely be in any big retail outlet.
Is Frosting Usually Vegan?
Sometimes, but not always. There are plenty of vegan frosting products out there, but there are a great deal that aren’t. Beware of buttercream or cream cheese frostings which typically contain milk and/or eggs. Some frostings contain a random amount of gelatin in them as well.
What Ingredients to Look Out For in Frosting?
There are a couple of unusual ingredients you should look out for when investigating frostings, although many of them are fairly obvious. Milk products, often listed as whey or milk solids, are most common, especially in flavors that you would expect – milk chocolate, cream cheese, etc. But don’t automatically discard those flavors as being non-vegan – Pillsbury does a vegan cream cheese frosting, so there’s a chance other brands will too.
Egg whites can sometimes make an appearance in more gourmet frostings, used often to add body and richness. Gelatin is less common, but can sometimes also appear, particularly in cheaper products.
Finally, there’s palm oil, which is a debatable item on the topic of veganism. Although it’s plant-based – it’s derived entirely from the palm plant – palm oil has received criticism in recent years for the way in which it is sourced, which often requires cleaning rainforests.
It’s up to you whether you consider that vegan- some do and some don’t. However, since this focus could be applied to almost any other product (everything requires some level of harm), we’d advise that you don’t worry about it if you’re just entering veganism. You’re doing much better for the rain-forests than most people, even if you are consuming palm oil. In addition, abstaining from additional products beyond those clearly not labeled with animals has the potential to turn off others from making the transition to the vegan lifestyle themselves.
Is Frosting Healthy Just Because It’s Vegan?
We wanted to address this as many people automatically associated vegan with healthier. The truth is that some processed vegan foods can be just as harmful as animal products and frosting probably falls into one of these categories given the fact that some brands have hydrogenated oil in addition to loads of processed sugar.
That’s not to say you can’t enjoy some cake once in a while (vegan is an ethical issue – not a health one), but we just wanted to make a quick disclaimer!
Consider making homemade frosting from scratch with delicious recipes like this one!
Hey, I’m Joey. I’ve been cooking since I was a little kid and love everything about it. You can find my writing about food, kitchen appliances (such as blenders) and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
Want to take all of the guess-work around going vegan?
Click here to check out the Vegan Starter Kit.
Choosing to be vegan is not just ethical it is for health and your comment that it isn’t makes you seem uneducated in nutrition
Hi Danae,
Thanks for your comment.
We do actually say that a whole-food plant based diet is the ideal diet for human health on many different sections of the site. We aren’t uneducated about the science on this subject and do actively promote a WFPB lifestyle.
For many though, ethics is a far more powerful motivator than health. Cigarette smokers can still live an ethical lifestyle, right?
Veganism is by its very nature an ethical position as per the definition from Vegan Society: (https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism).
I just wanted to add that cigarette smokers aren’t leading an ethical lifestyle. Cigarettes are tested on animals. Also there’s a lot of unnecessary waste from smoking cigarettes as well as the damage caused to companion animals.
You forgot about Betty Crocker as far as vegan frostings go. They’ve confirmed for me that all of their tub frostings (and cakes) are vegan unless there is a milk ingredient listed. However, you also forgot about another potential non vegan ingredient listed in some cakes and frostings – mono and diglycerides. As mentioned, Betty Crocker confirmed that the diglycerides listed in their cakes are from vegetable sources, but some companies use animal sources, as this is quite literally a fancy way of saying “fats.”
It’s pretty comical in a page of vegan frostings that the claim is made that vegan automatically means healthy. It means cruelty free first and foremost. Thrive Team is right. The science and studies prove a whole food plant based diet is the healthiest way to go. There is so much processed junk food that is considered vegan or accidentally vegan that is horrible from a nutrition standpoint. My preference is to be WFPB and a vegan so the my health and the health of the planet.
Some of these conventional brands of frosting may not actually be vegan. If they use sugar filtered through bone char, then they are not vegan. Let’s not forget about that!
Hi Louise. We’ve covered this elsewhere on the site, but personally I don’t view these types of things as non-vegan – especially since we’ll never know 100% where the source comes from. By these other types of things I mean animal products that aren’t explicitly labeled like meat, dairy, eggs, gelatin, etc. While I don’t eat a lot of processed sugar to begin with (or buy it), I think it just complicates the issue and drives non-vegans away from even considering the lifestyle.
But thanks for pointing it out 🙂 It’s good for people to be as educated as possible.