The Secret Ingredient To Add To Icing For Undeniable Flavor (2024)

FAQs

The Secret Ingredient To Add To Icing For Undeniable Flavor? ›

The secret ingredient to enhance its taste is vinegar. Vinegar creates a mouthwatering flavor without making it sour and balances out the sweetness, creating a more durable icing suitable for decorating baked goods. The vinegar provides an additional layer of flavor and better helps the icing hold together.

But, there are ways to make it more interesting; one such way is to hit it with a shot of vinegar. Don't worry, the icing won't taste sour or like vinegar at all, but the acid will help balance out the sweetness, making it taste more pleasant.

The egg white is what allows it to dry hard, which is what makes royal icing so versatile. I make my royal icing with meringue powder, which consists of dry powdered egg white and stabilizers (you can read more on the different forms of egg white below).

Although many do so to avoid cracks and to achieve a smooth appearance, I find just the tiniest bit — about 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon — also curbs the sweetness, allowing the wonderfully creamy mouth-feel of the icing to truly shine.

Increase Salt

Salt can help counteract sweetness in buttercream frosting, so adding a little more salt than the recipe calls for can help make the frosting less sweet. However, you don't want to add too much salt, or your frosting will taste salty and unpleasant.

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract works with any flavor and will turn up the volume on any other addition. Other options include lemon, almond, orange, peppermint, or any extract that goes with the frosting or the cake. Flavored coffee syrups. 2 tablespoons, or more to taste.

Sugar is the most important ingredient in all types of frostings, providing sweetness, flavor, bulk and structure.

The secret ingredient in this recipe is time. Most people whip their butter for only a few minutes before adding in sugar, but you'll never achieve a light and airy result this way. This frosting recipe takes its literal sweet time to really incorporate as much air as possible into the butter.

If it's too buttery, add some heavy cream, one tablespoon at a time, until you like the consistency. Whip it in on high speed for at least one minute when you like the texture. (See my footnotes about this below.) Switch over to a paddle attachment and run the frosting on low speed to get out any large air pockets.

Add a little dairy.

If you want to add a little bit of tanginess and creaminess, whip in some softened cream cheese. You can also whip in a few tablespoons of softened butter to replicate a homemade buttercream frosting.

How do you make icing sugar taste better? ›

I don't add corn syrup when making an icing for drizzling on cakes and pastries. Note 3: Flavor your icing with different extracts and juices. Here're a few suggestions: 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, lemon, lime or orange juice, Amaretto or Grand Marnier liquors. Or ½ teaspoon pure almond extract or mint extract.

Be careful when doing this though, as adding too much additional confectioners' sugar to the runny icing can alter the taste of your frosting, making it too sweet. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk at a time, making sure to whisk or mix with an electric mixer in between each tablespoon to check the consistency.

Not only is the technique to make ermine icing different, but it also uses far less sugar (and butter) than other types of frosting, so it's less rich and sweet. In other words, if you're a person who typically scrapes off frosting in favor of the cake underneath, ermine icing may be the one for you.

Creamy ingredients like Nutella, cream cheese, marshmallow creme, peanut butter or another nut butter will give the store-bought frosting tons of flavor with some additional smoothness.

White vinegar will allow the icing to be remixed back to a good condition if it has been resting too long. Additional egg white will produce sloppy and runny texture to use for spreading or flooding work.