Seven Minute Maple Frosting {Paleo}
Paleo-friendly Maple Seven-minute frosting made from whipped egg whites and maple syrup cooked in a double boiler to stabilize it and cook the whites to a safe temperature. This makes enough to generously frost a double layer cake or 24 cupcakes. It is amazing on gingerbread cake or carrot cake.
Today is my younger daughter’s seventh birthday. It is also the birthday of my cookbook, Maple. To celebrate I baked us a cake! Then I frosted it with this dreamy billowy Seven Minute Maple Frosting from the book.
How I Fell in Love with Maple
When Jason first suggested that we start backyard sugaring, I didn’t get it. At all! Here Jase is telling me that it would be “fun” to go out into the 33 degree spring morning to hammer ice cold metal taps into tree trunks and then lug buckets of sap around in the mud all afternoon. And then we would have to figure out how to boil all the sap without steaming up the house. Which he did (with no help from me) by jerry-rigging some sort of crazy stove and hotel pan contraption in the driveway. I’m thinking, as any self-respecting Flatlander would: No thanks Buddy, all that to end up with a cup of syrup? Um, I’m going to BodyPump, I’ll be back in a few hours. Then maybe I’ll watch from the kitchen window.
But then something happened. Friends and neighbors appeared in the driveway and stood around the stove, watched the steam rise. I cooked, with maple and experimented with making baked beans with sap, we ate and drank and everyone lugged sap. It WAS fun!
Now many years later, I know how to tap a tree myself, and what it means when the weather forecast calls for a warm day and a cold night- the sap will be running! I let my daughters drink sap from the tap, and they do their homework in the driveway while we boil.
And I actually look forward to sugaring season. I’ve of course remained true to my Philly girl roots, and I do it all in embarrassingly Flatlander style. I do have some heavy mud boots for trudging around our property during sugaring season. They just happen to have flowers printed on them. I also love when Jase calls me the Sap Wench. A title I suspect he gave me because my lack of skills makes me only really helpful to drive the Sap-mobile around in the evening to collect the sap from the day. All with a shatterproof plastic (BPA Free) glass of white wine in hand.
Through this process of falling in love with Maple, I have gone from serving mugs of sap baked beans to whole menus of maple recipes. To now a full cookbook of maple recipes. All with pure liquid gold in them.
Not Your Granny’s Maple Cookbook
So here it is, Maple: 100 Sweet and Savory Recipes Featuring Pure Maple Syrup {Quirk Books}. On it’s birthday. Written by a flower-printed-boot-wearing, wine swilling, bodypumping flatlander.
And this book is proudly so. Turn for example to page 24, and you’ll find a recipe for Maple Chia Pudding. Or page 84 and you’ll see Kale Skillet Salad with Walnuts and Maple.
Or that you’ll find icons throughout indicating if the recipe is vegan, paleo or gluten-free. Or that in the ingredient notes, I mention that if you choose to cook with canola oil it’s best to choose organic to avoid GMO’s. Or that there isn’t an all too expected stack of pancakes on the cover. It’s pretty clear, pretty quick, that this is not your granny’s maple cookbook.
But that’s the thing. It was never meant to be. There are other maple cookbooks out there that celebrate the history of maple. Or that dive into the best of the tried and true favorites and county fair blue ribbon winning maple recipes. They are great, and they have done too good of a job of tackling the topic from that perspective for me to do so the same way again.
No, this isn’t one of those books. I set out to write this book with my own unique perspective, as a Flatlander who has somehow found herself a backyard sugar-maker, to tell the next chapter in the story of maple syrup. I wanted to create recipes for Vermonters and Flatlanders alike, people like you and me.
Recipes like what we want to cook today. Delicious, interesting, from scratch but healthier. Cooking with a focus on seasonality, whole ingredients and making healthier choices for our families and the earth. This was a book that meant to be filled with dog-eared pages, the spine to be broken and the pages to be stuck together from use.
Signed copies available here
I am really excited for you all to see the book, hold it in your hands and cook from the pages. This book is a celebration of maple as an ingredient and as a way of life in whatever capacity you want to make it so.
Printseven minute maple frosting {paleo}
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: 6 cups 1x
Description
Paleo-friendly Maple Seven-minute frosting made from whipped egg whites and maple syrup cooked in a double boiler to stabilize it and cook the whites to a safe temperature. This makes enough to generously frost a double layer cake or 24 cupcakes. It is amazing on gingerbread cake or carrot cake.
Ingredients
- 2 egg whites
- 1 cup pure maple syrup, dark or amber
- 1/4 teaspoon white vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- pinch salt
Instructions
- Set up a double boiler: Bring 1 to 2 inches of water to a boil in a large saucepan or double boiler (8-cup capacity.) If improvising double boiler, make sure a medium heat-proof bowl (8-cup capacity) will fit on the top of the saucepan with out the sides hanging too far over the edges. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer.
- Beat egg whites, maple syrup and vinegar in the medium heat proof bowl with an electric mixer. Place the bowl over the simmering water, and beat until the mixture is glossy, fluffy and the egg-whites hold medium peaks, about 7 minutes. Note it may be necessary to adjust the heat under the bowl to keep a steady simmer.
- Remove the bowl from the heat, and continue beating until the mixture is cooled, 3 to 5 minutes. Beat in vanilla and salt.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 7 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Stove Top/Small Appliance
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/4 cup
- Calories: 38
- Sugar: 9 g
- Sodium: 21 mg
- Fat: 0 g
- Saturated Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 9 g
- Fiber: 0 g
- Protein: 1 g
Keywords: Paleo Frosting,Maple Frosting,Dairy Free Frosting,Seven minute frosting
Very good frosting! Followed recipe exactly.
★★★★★
Do you think, for this recipe, I could get away with an immersion blender?
HI Sheila, Does yours have the whisk attachment? If so, yes you can use that for sure. A whisk or hand mixer with beaters is designed to beat air into the frosting, whereas the steel blade of an immersion blender is more for blending and chopping. So unless you have the whisk attachment, I wouldn’t use the immersion blender.
I’m in love with this creative recipe. Such a fun experiment. If whipped cream, meringue and marshmallow fluff had a maple baby, this would be it! I’m an avid cook and this is the first time I’ve ever left a review; learning a new technique or new properties of familiar ingredients is more rare for me, so this was a treat. I am a fellow culinerd. Thanks for this one!
★★★★★
Okay, Thanks! That makes sense.Should I add it after mixing in the pot or before?
★★★★★
Great! Beat the sugar and honey together in the bowl with the whites then set it over the heat.
Can I use coconut sugar? If so should I make it powdered?
★★★★★
I’ve never used coconut sugar for something like this, so I am not sure.
May it be used under fondant?
I don’t think that would work. Unlike a traditional buttercream frosting that you can “set” in the refriderator, this frosting doesn’t get hard. It remains soft and marshmallow like even when you refrigerate it. It’s almost like whipped cream. The fondant wouldn’t have anything to hold onto. Assuming you’re not paleo, or dairy free, one idea would be to do a maple flavored buttercream by subbing granulated maple sugar in for white sugar in a buttercream recipe. That would give you a lovely maple flavor without the need for artificial maple extract and it would sit nicely under your fondant. Please let me know if you have any other questions, or need more help!
My mom loved this when I made it for her. The thing is that I used honey instead of maple syrup and it made the frosting more like a glaze. I think this is because honey is so sticky. Do you know anything that I can add to make it more like frosting (stiffer)?
★★★★★
The reason that happend probably has to do with the high amount of invert sugars in honey. Maple does have invert sugar, but not as much as honey. That’s likely the issue with the thinner body. If you want to try it again, you could do, 1/2 honey and 1/2 white sugar. That’ll reduce your invert sugars by half.
This frosting was a hit, people even took spoonfuls of the extra frosting I brought along! It took me aback a bit when I made it, I didn’t anticipate it being Swiss Meringue-ish, but I’m so pleased with the results (and the maple flavor, soooo good)! I volunteered to make a cake for some friends who have a daughter that has multiple allergies and sensitivities.
I successfully added activated charcoal to create a lovely black color and had no issues adding in blue and green food colorings during the cooking process as well as after it was cooled.
It held its shape after spreading it and piping trees onto the cake. The colors didn’t bleed through eachother overnight either.
I will definitely be keeping this as my go-to dairy/gluten/[mostly]fructose-free frosting in the future!
★★★★★
OMG I think I might make this just to eat – forget the cake! 😛 Maple is one of my favorite fall flavors!
★★★★★
I love how easy this is to make! I could totally eat this by the spoonful!
Oh this would be lovely on the pumpkin bread i’m whipping up today!
★★★★★
Hi there! I came across your frosting looking for a healthy paleo something to frost my paleo baked doughnuts with 🙂
I can’t beljeve how simple it is! Can this frosting be made ahead of time and refrigerated for later use?
It doesn’t really keep perfectly for more than 12 hours because it’s just egg whites, then tend to collapse a bit after several hours.
I am experimenting with recipes for my best friends daughter with multiple food allergies. She has requested strawberry frosting. For those that have made this, do you think the flavor profile would work if I added crushed freeze dried strawberries?
She is tired of everything tasting like coconuts (most of her sweets options are coconut based). Hoping this will be a great alternative!!!
Thanks in advance!
Hi Kimberly, Have you made traditional 7-minute frosting before? I think that would be better. I tested/styled a blueberry 7-minute frosting (on a cupcake) when I worked at EatingWell. If the ingredient list works for you, try the frosting part of that recipe with strawberry jam instead of blueberry. I think it would work great! It’s really easy! Here’s the link: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/250091/blueberry-cupcakes/
This is a very old comment, but couldn’t one just use watered down jelly/non-chunky jam that is the consistency of maple syrup instead?
I don’t think that would work. This recipe is based on a retro frosting technique from last century using pure white sugar and whites. 7 minute Frosting. It’s almost like a Swiss Meringue. Here the maple is standing in for pure white sugar. The jam or jelly has other ingredients beyond the sugar, namely fruit and sometimes pectin. I wouldn’t have a clue how much to call for a sub nor be able to guarantee that the fruit wouldn’t scorch. I think if you want to add jam, I’d stir a little into it at the end as a flavor enhancer (see comment above about the eatingwell recipe.)
How long can this icing sit out at room temperature before melting?
Because it is made with eggs it shouldn’t be left at room temp more than 4 hours.
Can I make the frosting now, then frost the cake, and keep in fridge a day? How many days is it ‘good’ if kept cold?
Hi P kroll, I would suggest that you make it the day you want to serve it. The frosting, while stabilized by the cooking process, is just egg whites and maple, so it does collapse a bit after several hours. I have saved left-overs in the fridge and they tasted fine (and are safe) they’re just not as pretty.
Do You happen to know if this would work with duck eggs? I was searching for a frosting recipe for my son with multiple food allergies and this might fit the bill. We have had some failures with substituting duck eggs for things like mayo, so I am wondering if anyone can send me some advice. Thanks a bunch!
That should be fine. Since duck eggs are larger, maybe try with one and a half whites instead. Let me know how it goes!
This may be a touch wasteful, but use a kitchen scale to see how many grams is in two chicken egg whites and then simply substitute it for duck egg whites.
According to Nigella Lawson:
For the UK a whole large egg (for the USA this is an extra large egg) out of its shell weighs approximately 60g. Of this about 1/3 is the yolk and 2/3 is the white so one egg white will weigh approximately 40g
Joyofbaking.com:
Weight of One Large Egg:
In Shell = 57 grams
Without Shell = 50 grams
White Only = 30 grams
Yolk Only = 18 gram
Based on that…I would go with 30-40 grams (let’s call it 35 grams) x 2 = 70 grams egg whites.
Hope that helps.
I made your frosting and I forgot to heat it up what do I do?
I’m not sure I understand, did you do the cooking step in step 2? If not, the mixture will not be stabilized or safe. I would say start over. If you are reticent to throw away so much precious maple syrup, you could try beating it in the double boiler for 7 minutes. It may work!
Eu posso afirmar que ganho dinheiro na internet, mas eu TRABALHO MUITO pra
ter meus resultados.