Buttercream Frosting Recipe Sweetened with Honey – 3 Ways

This is a Better Buttercream Frosting Recipe

Let’s say you’ve just made a delicious batch of healthier vanilla cupcakes for your child’s birthday party. Time to frost them. But with what? How about this honey-sweetened buttercream frosting recipe!

Most buttercream frosting recipes are FULL of powdered sugar (and also taste way too sweet, am I right, parents?). But then we are left with few healthy, taste bud-friendly frosting options that will hold their shape for swirling on top of cupcakes or frosting a layered cake.

This has been a constant struggle for me over the years of baking and assembling both of my daughters’ birthday cakes.

I really don’t want to make or buy a frosting that contains a pound of sugar for my children to consume. But finding a suitable healthy frosting option can be extremely challenging.

So I just had to make my own healthy buttercream frosting recipe to solve this problem. And surprisingly, the result is the best buttercream frosting that is also a super easy buttercream frosting recipe!

I love that this buttercream frosting is naturally sweetened with an ingredient that actually has beneficial nutritional components. I love that it’s not TONS of sugar. I love that I can make it in three different flavors.

And my toddler loves eating it off of her cake 😁

In her opinion, the cake really is not necessary in order to enjoy some frosting. Why do we put cake under the frosting anyway? I should just make her a swirly mound of frosting for her next birthday ☺️

Hey, if that’s what you are planning to use this recipe for, I won’t judge. Because, honestly, I’m not even worried about my toddler eating this healthy buttercream frosting all by itself as her dessert. That’s why this buttercream frosting is so much better than any other.

All the Ways You Can Spread This Frosting

In addition to the typical uses for this buttercream frosting, several of my recipes call for it as a coating or decoration. Because it can be colored and hardens when cold, it is pretty versatile.

Here are some of the ways you can use this buttercream frosting in it’s various flavors:

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Vanilla Cake or Cupcakes: The vanilla buttercream is just perfect for frosting cupcakes or assembling a layered cake. I have used it several times for such purposes and love how it turns out. It pairs beautifully with my vanilla cake/cupcake recipe.

Chocolate Cake: My decadent chocolate cake recipe also works really well with this frosting. I made a cake with alternating layers of vanilla and chocolate cake for my girls’ joint birthday party and frosted it with this vanilla buttercream frosting (colored pink of course). It went over really well with everyone (kids and adults).

Buttercream frosting is the ideal choice for adding some color and decoration to a chocolate cake (see the Substitutions & Tips section for my healthy food coloring recommendation).

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

Strawberry Cake Pops Coating: My strawberry cake pops recipe is a big favorite with kids of all kinds of taste preferences. For those who don’t care as much for chocolate, I coat them with this lemon buttercream frosting,

Although you can also use the strawberry buttercream for the coating, I really like the way the lemon compliments the strawberry flavor of the cake pops.

Cut Out Cookies: Lemon buttercream frosting is the best for cut out cookies – especially because my honey-sweetened cut out cookie recipe has a hint of lemon in the cookie itself. Adding a burst of lemon is a great way to turn a typically holiday-themed treat into a spring or summer treat.

Who says kids can’t enjoy fun-shaped, frosted cut out cookies in warm weather?

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

Strawberry Cake Pops Batter: The strawberry cake pops recipe I just mentioned also requires frosting to mix into the batter, and for that I use the strawberry buttercream frosting. This just bumps up the strawberry flavor a bit more.

Strawberry Cupcakes: My strawberry cupcakes recipe is an absolutely perfect treat to put under the strawberry version of this buttercream frosting recipe. Add an extra layer of strawberry excitement to your cupcakes by presenting them with a pink-tinged, strawberry flavored frosting.

Ingredients

• Butter: The type of butter you use for buttercream frosting does matter. Unsalted butter is usually preferable for making frosting, but you can use salted as well, depending on how particular your child is.

Normally in a recipe, I would recommend Irish grass-fed butter. However, if you want a particular color of frosting, you may want to use organic butter instead. Irish butter is more yellow in color than organic butter, so your frosting will be more yellow. This might not matter too much if you choose to color your frosting, but if you are going for a natural, light-colored frosting, use organic instead.

• Raw Honey: You must use raw, unfiltered honey in this recipe for it to work. Trust me, you cannot use processed, liquidy honey to make buttercream frosting. You want the stuff that is very thick and not pourable. It might even be crystalized which is totally fine. You can get raw, unfiltered honey from Amazon, Trader Joes and sometimes Home Goods.

• Vanilla Extract: Vanilla adds flavor in both the vanilla and strawberry buttercream. Make sure you have pure vanilla extract without any added ingredients.

• Lemon Extract: Lemon extract is where the tang in the lemon buttercream frosting comes from. You cannot use lemon juice with butter or it will curdle the butter. Make sure you use lemon extract.

• Freeze-Dried Strawberries: Freeze-dried strawberries are an excellent way to add strawberry flavor to buttercream frosting without adding extra liquids. You can get freeze-dried strawberries on Amazon and from a variety of grocery stores.

I recommend purchasing freeze-dried strawberries in individual serving packages to avoid waste. Freeze-dried strawberries begin to soften within about a half hour of the package being opened, so you will not be able to save any excess.

Instructions

The instructions for all three flavors of buttercream frosting are the same. Note that for the strawberry buttercream recipe, the instructions assume you have already crushed your freeze-dried strawberries. See the notes in the recipe card for details.

Step 1

Add all ingredients to your mixing bowl.

Step 2

Mix on medium until all ingredients are creamed together.

Step 3

Use immediately or store in the fridge for up to one week. To use after being stored in the fridge, let frosting sit at room temperature for a half hour and then cream with an electric mixer again.

Substitutions & Tips

• The best way to get your butter nice and soft for this recipe is to simply let it sit out on the counter for a half hour to an hour. If you try to speed up the process with heat, you will end up with melty butter. This does not work well for making buttercream frosting.

• This recipe is a small batch that will frost approximately three cupcakes. If you are frosting a dozen cupcakes, simply quadruple the servings on the print page to get adjusted measurements for a larger batch of frosting.

• If you want to try another alternative flavor, you could replace the vanilla extract with another flavor of extract such as almond, orange or peppermint.

• If you want to color your frosting, I recommend using a plant-based, dye-free, sugar-free option like India Tree food coloring. Regular food colorings are full of unhealthy additives that are best avoided if possible.

• For tips on how to frost a cake or cupcakes, watch videos on YouTube. Trust me, watching a short video can make a world of difference. I was never good at frosting cakes or cupcakes until I finally watched some YouTube videos to learn some basic techniques. All of a sudden, I was being asked if I wanted to sell my cakes! :O