Day 2: Vegan Sugar Free Vanilla Frosting

I just wanted to say my heart goes out to everyone in Boston; to those who have lost loved ones and to those who are injured. We will be praying for you.

Now on to the frosting!  I've been wanting to make yesterday's cupcakes but whats a cupcake without frosting? I've been endlessly searching for a frosting recipe that didn't use butter or sugar. I finally found this one. I had to do a little tweaking in the end and as you can see it calls for agave nectar or maple syrup neither of which are sugar free. But! Yes a very excited But! I have my own sugar free maple syrup substitute! In face you can easily make any kind of syrup substitute using Xylitol and water! I'll have a post on this tomorrow I think.

The finished product *insert huge grin here*

The quick Xylitol syrup recipe is as follows.
1 part water
2 parts xylitol

Combine in pot and set on low heat. Stir until Xylitol is completely dissolved. Cool.  Cool?  Cool!

I swapped this in for the agave in this recipe at the same measurement and it came out great.  So here is my modified recipe.

Sugar-Free Vegan Frosting

2 cups organic palm shortening (Spectrum)
1 cup arrowroot powder
1 cup Xylitol Syrup
4 teaspoons non-alcoholic vanilla
2 teaspoons almond flavoring (non-alcoholic)

The original directions say to just throw this in a bowl and mix it up. Done. But when I did that I got this:

Um... Yuck!

 And this was with the Vegetable Shortening at room temperature. Things just didn't want to properly combine. So rude! To solve this I heated the mixture up slightly (I turned on my oven and sat the bowl on top of it.) Then once the shortening melted down a little I mixed it all together.

Aaa looks like we're on the right track.

Once I got it to the above consistency I cooled it in the fridge. Every fifteen minutes for about an hour I took it out and whipped it a bit until finally it looked just right!

Alllllmost...

Yes!! Beautiful! Stay that way, you're beautiful, don't ever change!

 Once I got it looking like above all that was left was to add it to my cupcakes from yesterday and Voila! Vanilla, chocolatey almost perfection!

The icing itself was very tasty. Not too sweet not too too oily, but good. My ultimate verdict: Gonna keep looking. This icing, though tasty, was a little too difficult to put together. Also I don't know how this would work if I let it sit out any longer. I iced this baby and then ate it up. Chances are it would have started separating and melting all over again, which is a little less than ideal. Just a little. Also I'm not too keen on literally eating mouthfuls of Vegetable shortening. I know its probably the least evil of all frosting ingredients but there has to be something better. In the future I might try messing with a coconut cream/oil whipped topping. Still this was very satisfying. I hope you enjoy it!