Sweet Potato Frosting

A smooth, thick, and creamy frosting that’s made with whole food ingredients. This Sweet Potato Frosting is the perfect topping for your naturally sweetened, healthier dessert recipes. This recipe is the perfect texture to use with piping bags and tips, so if you are feeling fancy- you can decorate your desserts with this!

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I wanted a nut-free, date-sweetened alternative to my typical go-to cashew frostings/ icings, and that’s when this recipe came to mind. Of course, after I was like— ahhhh ha! Use a creamy Japanese sweet potato, I searched the internet and sweet potato frosting recipes were already in existence. So I can’t take credit for the idea, but I sure do love it!

Japanese sweet potatoes are my favorite to use as the base for this recipe, as the flavor is fairly neutral, slightly sweet, and even a little buttery. A purple sweet potato adds such a fun, vibrant color. Add a little lemon juice to the purple sweet potato version and the color becomes more pink! It’s so fun! The purple sweet potato has a little more distinct flavor to it than the Japanese sweet potato version- but I still enjoy it! If you are feeling creative and artsy, you can even do a combination of colors and flavors- like I did for my cupcake recipes.

I have not tried this recipe with a regular orange sweet potato, feel free to give it a try. If you can’t find Japanese sweet potatoes, a Hannah sweet potato would probably be a great alternative too.

Steaming or boiling the potatoes rather than roasting them provides the best outcome for this frosting recipe. At first, I was absolutely sure that roasting was the way to go- as it generally produces a really lovely caramelizing. To my surprise, the roasted potatoes really brought out the potato flavor in the final results. It was way too overpowering. So I have found steaming or boiling the potatoes to produce a really nice and neutral flavor that blends with the other flavors better.

I am just starting to explore all the fun things with this as the base of the recipe. I recently made a chocolate frosting variation (coming soon) and started playing with a peanut butter combination. Add a little lemon juice for a lemony flare or even get creative with fruit powders or freeze dried fruits for various flavors or colors. Oh even a cinnamon frosting would be so nice! As I expand these ideas more, I will share what I come up with!

A few notes before you get started:

COOKING THE POTATO: The sweet potato can be boiled or steamed whole or chopped. It may take less time when chopped. Two cups chopped raw sweet potato is about enough to get 1 cup mashed once cooked. It takes about 20-25 minutes to steam the chopped sweet potato. To make sure the sweet potato is cooked all the way, pierce it with a fork. You want it to be cooked enough so it’s easily mashable. I do remove the skins for mine to get the smoothes possible recipe.

VANILLA: I have tried this with vanilla extract and thought the alcohol flavor was way too overpowering for what I was looking for. If you have an alcohol free vanilla, feel free to sub that in. The vanilla bean powder produced the best vanilla flavor compared to the regular extract. I bought my vanilla bean powder on sale to help save money. I had never experimented with the bean powder in my recipes before, but I am a big fan now! I’m a big vanilla fan, and appreciate the pure vanilla flavor you can get with the powder. Feel free to play around with the vanilla measurements in this recipe.

DATE SUGAR: I have not tested this recipe with whole, pitted dates yet. The date sugar is a new favorite ingredient in my kitchen- as it has the texture of cane sugar, yet it’s still a whole food as it’s just pulverized dates. If you are feeling adventurous, you can try using whole dates in this recipe. You’ll probably need 1/2 cup pitted dates. Make sure they are super soft so they get easily blended into the recipe. I buy my date sugar on sale when I can, as it saves me money. I have had some luck spotting it stores like TJ Max and Home Goods, so keep an eye out there too!

PIPPING BAGS: I recently found a food-grade silicone pipping bag on amazon, and found it to be so great to work with. Flexible, easy to clean, and reusable! This frosting is perfect for decorating, which is something I am so excited about too. I used to struggle to get the cashew cream texture thick and smooth enough for pipping, but the sweet potato frosting is so easy to work with and has a very similar texture as regular frosting.

 

Sweet Potato Frosting

Kristina DeMuth, MPH, RD, LD
A smooth, thick, and creamy frosting that’s made with whole food ingredients. This Sweet Potato Frosting is the perfect topping for your naturally sweetened, healthier dessert recipes.
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Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup mashed Japanese, Hannah, or purple sweet potato (see note above)
  • ¼ cup date sugar (or more to taste)
  • ¼ cup unsweetened soymilk (or other plant-based milk), more as needed for thinning
  • ½ tablespoon vanilla bean powder

Instructions
 

  • Combine the sweet potato, date sugar, soymilk, and vanilla bean powder in a food processor. Process the ingredients. It may help to scrape down the sides a few times to help the ingredients blend better. 
  • Add a few more tablespoons of soymilk, 1-2 tablespoons at a time until the desired texture and consistency is reached. Blend until smooth and creamy. Store the frosting in the fridge until ready to use. 

Notes

Makes about 1 cup of frosting. 
For the milk, you may need up to 3-4 more tablespoons of soymilk. Try to avoid adding too much, as you do want the frosting to be fairly thick.