Cupcakes with frosting on top look quite delicious to all cake lovers. Now, you only know how to make cupcakes, and you are pretty good at it. But, you didn’t try recipe before. Although commercially made frosting includes a number of ingredients. You can still make it without key ingredients very easily.
Dealing with flour, butter, sugar, etc. while making a cake is more complicated than making the frosting. You don’t need to rush towards the grocery store to grab the ingredients, and waste time. I will show you how you can make it using all that you have in the kitchen.
Frosting Types
When you search for frosting cupcakes you see lots of different colors and styles. Each of them tastes different. Before you jump to it to add on the top of your cute and adorable looking cupcakes, be sure to have an idea about different types of frosting.
American Buttercream
Most homemade, as well as commercial frosting, is American Buttercream frosting. This frosting tastes very sweet. You will see cupcakes with the frosting in most grocery and commercial bakeries.
American buttercream frosting requires to cream butter with powdered sugar. You need to continue creaming until it’s light, fluffy, and turns into bright white color.
You can also add some amount of salt, vanilla, milk to make the frost more tasty and delicious.
Italian Buttercream
Compared to the American buttercream, the Italian one is a bit more difficult to make and fancier as well. The recipe requires to cook the sugar until it reaches a soft ball stage and pour the balls into whipping egg whites.
American buttercream tastes more sugary than Italian buttercream. Also, this one is more smooth and silky. To make it, you will need egg whites, granulated sugar, cream of tartar, vanilla, butter, and obviously salt. There are other types of this buttercream; but, this one is the most easier one.
Cream Cheese Frosting
Another great tasting and less sugary frosting type is cream cheese frosting. If your taste bud isn’t much sugar-friendly, you will love this one. It tastes like red velvet or carrot cake that is rich in cakes.
Apart from creaming butter, you will need cream cheese as well as powdered sugar. Compared to other types, it’s much easier to make without any fancy ingredients. Still, you will have a satisfying punch flavor in the cake.
Whipped Buttercream
This one is a hybrid type buttercream that combines both American and Italian buttercream. Although whipped buttercream is less common than the others, still it would be nice if you try.
To prepare the buttercream, you will need to whisk flour and milk together and make a thick paste out of them. Then, consider creaming granulated sugar and cream butter together. After that, you can add your flour mix, and continue beating until you get frosting like whipped cream.
Frosting Without Key Ingredients
You don’t need to collect fancy and overwhelming ingredients to make the frosting. It can easily be done without some of the key ingredients. The taste and flavor will remain pretty much the same without these.
Powdered Sugar
If you don’t have any powdered sugar, no need to rush to make some or buy it from the store. Your frosting will taste perfect without it.
Instead of trying buttercream recipes that require powdered sugar, try Italian or whipped buttercream that uses granulated sugar and don’t need powdered ones. Don’t attempt making American buttercream without powdered sugar, unless you have no problem with the grainy outcome.
Without Powdered Sugar or Milk
Again, you need to try a recipe that requires no powdered sugar or milk. Here, Italian buttercream recipe is recommended as well. Even though it’s a bit difficult to make, still you will do fine without these two ingredients.
Without Powdered Sugar of Flour
Frosting recipes don’t solely depend on flour like cakes. So, you can make delicious frosting without using flour as well. Likewise, the previous two options, Italian buttercream frosting, is the recommended one. The frosting comes perfect with a great taste without this specific ingredient.
Without Any Sugar and Butter
The ingredients that I have mentioned previously aren’t that much necessary when it comes to frosting. But, if you are to make frosting without sugar and butter, this is when things get a bit tricky.
In such a case, you can make frosting out of whipped cream. All you need is to whisk some heavy cream with vanilla and granulated sugar; your frosting is ready to serve your cravings. If you prefer creamier frosting, add some mascarpone or cream cheese.
There is another option to go with. You can use meringue, and use it as frosting. No matter which Italian buttercream recipe you follow, consider not using any butter. It will make a fluffy meringue, which will be easier to ice with pretty much anything.
You can manage to make great tasting frosting without key ingredients only if you have essential tools for baking. Make sure you have them in your kitchen.
On to the Frosting
I hope that you already have a frosting recipe. If that’s not the case, be sure to check out this vanilla buttercream frosting recipe. In this section, I will guide you to make some changes to make your frosting thicker and softer without compromising the taste and flavor.
Less Sugary
Not all people love to have too much sugar or sweet taste in their frosting, especially adults. You can reduce the sweetness in a very convenient way. Consider using a cream cheese frosting; it will taste sweet, but much less sugary. Its tangy and delicious flavor will not hurt your teeth.
Again, Italian buttercream is less sugary, so you can also consider this option as well. Adding citric acid or a small amount of lemon juice and zest can also cut a significant amount of sugar from the frosting. This acidic contrast will make the frosting less sweet while maintaining the real taste.
Make a Thicker Frosting
Sugar makes the frosting thicker. The more sugar you add, the thicker your frosting will be. However, if you don’t like much sugary taste, yet want to make a thick frosting, there are a few things that you need to change while preparing it.
Regardless of your buttercream recipe, add some extra butter, heavy cream, softened cream cheese. These ingredients can make you thicker buttercream. Even if you don’t use flour or cornstarch, you will still get satisfactory thickness in the frosting.
Some recipes suggest using cornstarch to thicken the frosting. To do that, you will need to mix a small amount of cornstarch with the frosting. Keep adding it in 1 tsp increments until you get the preferred consistency.
To add flour, take 1 cup of boiling milk, then mix ¼ cup of flour into it, whisk the mix until it becomes a paste. Add the mix to the frosting to make it thick.
For thickening cream cheese frosting, cream cold butter using powdered sugar until it becomes fluffy and light. After that, add cream cheese frosting into the mix. The frosting will become stiff and keep the crease cheese cool.
Make the Frosting Thinner
Not everyone prefers having a thicker frosting, and if you are one of those, you can make the layer thin without doing much hassle.
Simply add some milk when the layer is still in texture state. Adding milk will also give it a smooth flavor.
Final Words
After reading the entire article, hopefully, you will be able to make frosting without key ingredients as per your taste. There are so many options to customize your frosting. Just make sure you bake a perfect cake for applying the frosting on it.