Frosting at the Mouth

• Fat and sugar are the main components of most cake frosting's lip-licking goodness. Milk, butter and other dairy products often contribute these components. Making frosting without milk and butter is as simple as using dairy-free substitutes. In any frosting recipe calling for milk, replace with an equal amount of soy, almond, cashew, coconut, oat, hemp or rice milk. Coconut and hemp milk have distinctive flavors, but they're subtle and blend well with sweeteners and vanilla and hazelnut extracts.

Let Them Eat Cake

• Advances in food science mean the dairy case at the supermarket is full of healthy, tasty replacements for milk and butter. Vegan butter, to name one. There's also dairy- and soy-free margarine and organic dairy-free shortening. Enter coconut butter: This is the meat of the coconut ground into a paste. Its consistency evokes solid butter, but you might want to thin it with a little nondairy liquid when creaming it in a mixer. Use the same quantity as you would use solid butter. Oils are another alternative in frosting recipes involving melted butter, but use 3/4 cup oil for every 1 cup of butter, or 3 parts oil for every 4 parts melted butter the frosting recipe requires.

But It's Not Buttercream

• Cream is not what it used to be. And that's wonderful news to vegans and the lactose intolerant. To simulate the dense carrot cake frosting you can't or won't eat, reach for vegan cream cheese. Dairy-free cream cheese and oil-based margarine emulsify and fluff up well when mixed with sugar. To replicate the velvety, buttery sweetness of buttercream, try a nondairy butter-flavored vegetable shortening in place of butter in equal quantities, or a mixture of vegetable shortening with a stick or two of dairy-free margarine. Cream together with powdered sugar in a stand mixer or by hand, just like you would when making a standard buttercream frosting.

The New Roux Routine

• Roux frostings, such as ermine, are most closely associated with red velvet cake. But this frosting can go on anything. It's a uniform suspension of starch and protein in fat and water. For the fat component, a vegan butter product will coat the flour granules as they expand. An alternative to flour, soy milk powder provides the starch and the protein, and mixed with water, doubles as a liquid dairy medium akin to milk. Another viable mixture is plain white flour, margarine and unsweetened almond or soy milk; or a little cornstarch, soy milk, sugar and an extract of your choice.

Nothing But Raw Nuts

• Soaking raw cashews in water and blending them yields a texture similar to whipped cream cheese. Because they're not roasted, their flavor is neutral enough for a frosting. Blended raw cashew cream makes an all-purpose nondairy base for any icing. A little coconut oil gives it sheen and smoothness. Sweeten with honey and balance the sweetness with some acid, such as lemon juice, and a dash of salt. Personalize the frosting according to the occasion with a splash of any extract.