Sugar free frosting / icing recipes
As you might remember, Cass from Diary of a Frugal Family is on a mission to get kids across the country cooking! She shares the same sentiment as me – no child is too young to cook!
This week she wants us to make cupcakes – what’s not to love about a cupcake? You can top them with whatever you like, leave them plain or cut in half and slather with cream and jam. The thing is, Cass wants us to go wild and the winner will be selected for the eye candy on their toppings.
Sugar free frosting
Unfortunately for us, this is a bit of a problem! Little Miss Green cannot eat refined sugar and I won’t give her artificial flavourings and colourings, so that limits my choice for funky toppings – alas there will be no shiny balls or glitter at Chez Green, but I did my best because icing is something I’ve never managed yet to make without sugar…
As a side note, if you need to avoid refined sugar or have other allergens, there are so many companies now that will help you with all sorts of diets, so you and your children don’t need to miss out. There are lots of sugar alternatives such as coconut blossom sugar or maple syrup. And you don’t have to miss out on chocolate either. You can buy chocolate moulds and learn to make your own delicious products -without all the nasties! Once you’ve found a suitable sugar substitute and learned to make chocolate, you can then go on to bake bisciuts, cookies and cakes to your heart’s content.
Anyway, back to my cupcake icing experiment!
Cass shared her nana’s recipe as follows:
Cupcakes recipe
ingredients
100g butter
100g sugar (we used 70gms fructose)
2 eggs
100g self raising flour
method
Cream together butter and sugar until pale and creamy
Beat in 2 eggs until completely mixed in
Fold in 100g self raising flour until all 4 ingredients are combined
Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180 c for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Sugar free baking
So onto the sugar free toppings. What I thought was going to be an impossible challenge became a total success and I’ve finally succeeded in making sugar free frosting. Yay!
I have to admit to being just a tiny bit proud of my achievements! Sugar free icing has been something Little miss green has asked for a LOT and I’ve never really bothered after my first attempt, a few years ago, went horribly wrong. I thought I could grind fructose to make icing sugar, but take it from me – you can’t. What I ended up with was something that was, well wet! The icing never set and it was a total disaster that just slid around the kitchen, looked awful and tasted as bad as it looked.
Anyway, that is now history and get ready to be amazed at my culinary efforts this week!
Sugar Free Frosting #1
Vanilla icing
This one was the clear winner and the favourite of everyone:
Double cream, whipped
Mix in Cream Cheese
Vanilla essence
Agave syrup
Top with a pink sugar free marshmallow (yep, they exist!) and they look and taste fantastic.
Sugar free frosting #2
Blackcurrant icing
This one was more an adult taste. I only had blackcurrant jam but I think strawberry would be perfect and kids would like it too.
Mix together cream cheese and sugar free jam. Not only do you get a great taste, but you get pretty colours without the artificial colourings too. Top with white marshmallows 😀
Sugar free frosting #3
White chocolate icing
Melt some white sugar free chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water with some double cream and a tiny amount of butter. Spread on the cupcakes and top with finely grated dark chocolate.
Sugar free icing #4
Dark chocolate icing
This was a chocolate flavour frosting made by mixing together cream cheese, cocoa powder and agave syrup. I topped with a small amount of the white chocolate icing.
All in all a great success and thanks to Cass for the inspiration and motivation to finally get this sorted!
I love them all 😉
You’re not too late as I’m not doing the round up till the weekend so I’ll def be including these lovely recipes
Thanks very much x x
Thanks for sharing! I cant wait to try blackcurrant icing for myself!! 🙂
@[email protected]: Awww, thanks Cass! x
@Emma: Hi Emma, glad you like them – the blackcurrant one is definitely the ‘adult’ tasting one, so you can keep it all for yourself with a bit of luck!
I will definitely need to try this one. I certainly agree that no child is too young to start cooking. I wish I had learnt when I was young.
@Jade: I never learned as a child either, Jade. In fact, it wasn’t until I left home and had to suddenly fend for myself that I knew how to do anything, so I’m completely self taught. It would have been nice to spend time in the kitchen with my mother though 😉
These look yummy! Have you tried stevia as a sugar substitute for your icing? I have some icing recipes on my site you should check out! Be sure to tell me what you think of them! 😉
Jo
@Jo: Hi Jo, welcome to the site. I’ve never tried stevia, although I have heard lots about it. I’ll check out your recipes and see what I think – thank you!
Fructose is just the same as sugar.
Try using Liquid Stevia instead.
@Dani: Thanks Dani; I’ve not experimented with stevia so not an authority to list recipes. Not sure if I can get it here; I’ll check it out 🙂
Hi,
I’m interested to try the vanilla icing you list. Can you give quantities for the ingrediants? I’m not much of a cook so find it hard to do things by feel but am trying to make some sugar free cakes for my twin daughters’ third birthdays.\
Thanks!
Ali
I love your recipes but did you know that agave is more than 90% fructose, same with honey etc. they’re all bad. You can use rice malt syrup/dextrose powder or glucose syrup which is completely fructose free.