Healthy frosting sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but it can be reality and makes an amazing fruit pizza, for starters. It has no white sugar, and your kids will love to make it themselves!
Frosting can really divide a relationship, you know.
There’s inch-thick versus paper-thin, there’s so sweet it’s practically straight sugar vs. cream cheese vs. whipped cream fluff with almost no taste.
And in my husband’s book, there’s the cake with no frosting at all!
Cake With or Without Frosting
Who does that? A whole cake with no frosting? That’s what we used to make him when we were dating, just a vanilla box mix, no frosting.
He’s a vanilla kind of guy in every way.
For better or for worse (and probably worse now that I know more about sugar), my mom’s homemade frosting actually won him over.
We in the family all like to frost our baked goods, so we kind of like that dad likes frosting now. It’s delicious with its almond flavoring, truly the magic ingredient.
But. We are a Kitchen Stewardship® family, and frosting that is mostly sugar, albeit using plenty of healthy butter, is not something that we should be seeking out.
Today’s recipe was my solution to healthy + delicious frosting.
It combines thick, probiotic-rich yogurt cheese with minimal sweetener and almond extract… Perfection.
The Benefits of Yogurt Cheese
Yogurt cheese is a lot like cream cheese but with only one ingredient and of course probiotics, which are always helpful. For a whole cup of yogurt cheese, we only use one tablespoon of pure maple syrup, tops, which means the sugar and carb count stays very low.
In fact, for kids like mine, who are used to eating plain yogurt with zero sweetener, we actually can get away with pretty much no sweetener at all. Think of it – there’s already usually a good bit of sugar in whatever baked good you’re topping. We don’t need to slather pure sweet on top and mask all the good flavors we’ve worked to get in the middle.
The best part, in my opinion, is that once you’ve made this recipe once or twice, you won’t even need the recipe again. It’s super easy to just eye it up, guess and check, and taste until you love it.
This is a great recipe for the kids to make. Let them experiment with ratios and sweetness. It will foster creativity while teaching them life skills.
Your kids can learn to cook, even if you don’t know where to start
My 4 kids and I created the online Kids Cook Real Food lessons to help bring real food and independence to families all over. Over 10,000 kids have joined us and we’d love to invite you along for the adventure!
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How to Use Healthy Creamy Frosting
So what to put almond flavored probiotic yogurt cheese frosting ON? Just about anything will work.
It goes great on any cake or cupcake that would work for a birthday cake and is especially great on things with spices like cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. That means any sort of applesauce, carrot, or pumpkin muffin is a good fit.
And cookies? Why not! Particularly a butter or sugar cookie that doesn’t have a lot of flavor in itself, really does need a little zip in the frosting. This frosting works great!
Try these:
- Easy Pumpkin Muffins
- Gluten-free Allergy-Friendly Pumpkin Muffins
- Applesauce Einkorn Muffins
- Easy Healthy Pumpkin Cookies
- Gluten-free Soft Pumpkin Cookies
This frosting is already incorporated in some family favorite recipes like our egg-free, grain-free first birthday cake (a frozen pumpkin fudge) and our healthy whole grain fruit pizza.
One year for my son’s birthday we used half sugary frosting (Mom’s famous!) and half probiotic frosting, and NO food coloring, just cute superheroes on sticks!
The only bad news ironically is that my husband doesn’t like this one! He’s just not a fan of cream cheese, so even though he really does like plain yogurt, this is tangier than he prefers. Bummer, right?
I’m thinking if I took the time to blend it with some thawed frozen berries, however, he’d be all about it. Worth trying for a future post, right?
Finally, here’s that recipe that you can pretty much eye up and memorize after you try it once!
Print
Healthy Probiotic Frosting to Reduce Sugar for Kids (& Adults)
- Prep Time: 5
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: American
Description
A solution to healthy + delicious in frosting. It combines thick, probiotic-rich yogurt cheese with minimal sweetener and almond extract… Perfection.
Ingredients
- 1 c. yogurt cheese
- 1/2–1 tsp. almond extract
- 1 tsp. – 1 Tbs. maple syrup, to taste
Instructions
Whip up until smooth, and be sure to taste and adjust as necessary!
That’s it!
I generally don’t measure anything but just pour a bit of extract into the cap and dump it in, then drizzle a wee bit of maple syrup on top. I really do think that it is sustainable and pretty yummy without any sweetener, and it’s very easy to reduce carbs further by using stevia drops. NuStevia even has flavored stevia that could switch up your taste sensations easily!
Notes
RELATED: How to use stevia liquid
Notes:
* Color this frosting pink by adding some juice from thawed, frozen raspberries or strawberries.
* Add flavor by stirring in pure fruit jam or pureed fresh or frozen thawed berries of any kind.
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Some Quality Probiotics
Some of these I’ve used, some I’m planning to use, and some have been recommended by friends and professionals alike. It’s good to remember a few things about probiotics: 1. People should get different colonies of probiotics, so switching brands/strains every so often (6 weeks?) is good practice. 2. What works great for one person’s needs doesn’t always work for another. I’ve personally tried:- Just Thrive Probiotics – this one can be taken during antibiotics and not be rendered ineffective, which almost all other probiotics are! It’s the top-recommended probiotic overall by Nutrivore Dr. Sarah Ballantyne. 😮 (Be sure to use the code Katie15 for 15% off; also found on Amazon and from Perfect Supplements where you can use the coupon KS10 for 10% off!)
- Seed Daily Synbiotic – the new player in the field but recommended by superstars like Chris Kresser for its unique probiotic/prebiotic synergy. Here’s my full review including a number of surprises for my thinking and a 15% off code!
- Note: If you’re struggling with digestion, especially constipation, or you feel like you really need to populate your gut with healthy probiotics, I would recommend Saccharomyces Boulardii in addition to any other you choose (except any above which include this strain). Saccharomyces Boulardii is research-proven to get through the digestive tract without being killed, which is rare.
- Balance One probiotics with a unique time-release formula (use the code KITCHENS15 at either Balance One’s site or even Amazon to save 15% either place! Wow! Use the code at checkout on Amazon btw.)
For Little Ones:
- Mary Ruth’s liquid probiotic is a liquid probiotic that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and tastes like…nothing! It’s my new favorite for administering to kids! (Use code KCRF15 for 15% off!)
- Balance One Kids probiotics are sugar-free, easy to swallow, and made in the USA. Use the KITCHENS15 code for 15% off one-time purchases.
- Raise Them Well is a brand I trust, and they have a great chewable probiotic for kids. Hyperbiotics also has a chewable probiotics for kids that we’ve used!
- Just Thrive now has a gummy probiotic for kids (and gummy-loving adults)! Kimball-kids approved! Be sure to use the code Katie15 for 15% off.
- Llama Naturals also has a gummi pre- and probiotic.
- Biokult – highly recommended by many, including the GAPS diet
- Klaire Labs Pro-biotic complex V-caps or Ther-Biotic Complete (25 billion CFU)
- Probiophage DF (7 dairy-free strains)
- Transformation Enzymes (5 billion CFUs that may get through digestive tract…)
- Primal Blueprint (4 strains, 10 billion CFUs) Use code KS10 for 10% off!
- Pharmax high potency (4 strains + FOS) or long-term HLC maintenance (2 strains)
- Pro-Bio from Enzymedica (8 strains)
- Syntol from Arthur Andrew Medical (13.6 billion CFUs with prebiotic, spore germinating blend, yeast cleanse)
- Smidge (8 strains, formulated for sensitive digestive systems, allergen-free, also have an infant probiotic powder)
I have made one made yogurt and yogurt cheese. Question, can you freeze yogurt cheese to make icing when you need or even freeze the icing o use another time?
Hi Ginny,
I’ve never tried freezing it, but freezing yogurt really negatively impacts the consistency, so I’d be hesitant to expect great results with yogurt cheese.
You should look into making frosting with whipping cream in the food processor. You are in complete control of the type and amount of sugar. As a bonus, you can powder freeze dried fruit to add to it. We have made strawberry, but not ventured to other flavors. Thanks for all the great posts and encouragement.