This is a really easy recipe for basic icing that can be coloured. It only takes a few minutes to make and is perfect for both cakes and cupcakes.

Let the kids go wild choosing which food colouring to add. It’s also great fun to see what happens when you mix two or more different colours together!

Try a basic vanilla or chocolate cake recipe like this Super Easy Chocolate Cake (from Bake Play Smile). Replace the chocolate icing with the recipe below to experiment with making icing in different colours.

Child decorating cake with green icing and various lollies

Print Recipe

Quick and Easy Icing for Cakes and Cupcakes

Course: Dessert

Keyword: easy, quick

Author: The Family Creative

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups icing sugar mixture, sifted
1-2 tbspn milk (or hot water)
few drops food colouring of your choice
sprinkles or lollies to decorate

Instructions

Stir icing sugar and milk (or water) in a medium bowl until smooth.
Add food colouring a few drops at a time, mixing thoroughly until icing is the desired colour. Icing should be easily spreadable on the cake but not too runny.
Decorate with sprinkles or lollies (or both!), as desired.

Notes

If icing is too runny, add more icing sugar. If icing is too thick, add a few extra drops of milk or water at a time and stir thoroughly. Repeat until icing is desired consistency.

The picture shows this batch of icing wasn’t quite thick enough, hence why it’s running over the sides. To avoid this, a bit extra icing sugar could have been added to the mix. It will still be delicious either way!

Makes approximately 1 ½ cups of icing. Enough for the top of one standard cake, or 12 cupcakes.

Sprinkles tip when decorating cupcakes: to avoid sprinkles bouncing all over the place, pour some sprinkles in a bowl. Let the kids dip an iced cupcake upside down into the bowl and the sprinkles will stick to the icing, while containing the mess!