Make Canned Frosting Taste Homemade With One Toasty Addition

In this day of ready-made everything, canned frosting is a huge time-saver for busy people. We like to have our cake and eat it, too, though, so when we take a recipe shortcut, we still want our dishes to taste homemade. With some ingenuity and not much time at all, you can make canned frosting taste more like it's from scratch — and fool hungry guests or bake sale-goers into thinking you spent hours toiling away over a hot stove.

To give store-bought icing some much-needed texture, added flavor, and a more from-scratch appearance, try adding toasted coconut. Toasting coconut flakes takes them to new heights, adding crispness, bringing out nuttiness and hints of caramel, and deepening the overall flavor. It's a quick upgrade, and is by no means basic — it will give your frosting a spruce-up that tastes like it took a lot of time.

This quick mix-in is one of many ways to upgrade canned frosting, and it pairs nicely with various frosting flavors. It's a natural fit for chocolate (think German chocolate cake), complements cream cheese or vanilla frosting, and lends a tropical note to fruit flavors like strawberry or lemon. You can buy pre-toasted coconut flakes — we like the Yupik brand — or toast some coconut yourself in an air fryer or oven.

Before adding your toasted topping, it's advisable to whip your frosting. This makes it easier to mix in ingredients and incorporates air, making your canned product fluffier and adding a bit of volume. After removing the frosting from its tightly packed container, place it in a bowl, and whip it up with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it's nice and airy. Then, fold in your toasted coconut.

Another delicious add-in is nuts. Pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds — virtually the entire nut family will add flavor and texture to frosting. Like coconut, toasting takes them over the top in terms of flavor and texture.

For even more tasty upgrades, check out a professional baker's five tips for taking canned frosting to the next level. With very little effort, your cakes, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, and other frosting-topped desserts will go from basic to bomb!