Katie

Hi! New here, but I’ve been also researching Virginia’s cottage food laws. Regarding buttercream – unlike the hard stance Virginia takes on cream cheese, the law doesn’t specifically address buttercream so it is a gray area. The key is whether you need to refrigerate it, which mostly depends on the exact ingredients you use and the proportions. For example, the butter is normally stabilized by the sugar so it is not usually an issue, but some people use milk to thin it out – the amount of milk you use would tend to make it more necessary to refrigerate (and therefore become a problem). If you use water, lemon juice, or only a tiny amount of milk, and you do not refrigerate it normally, that is probably fine.