Add This Ingredient To Store-Bought Chocolate Frosting For Amped-Up Flavor

We're going to let you in on a little secret: Just because you buy something from the grocery store that's ready to eat doesn't mean you have to eat it the way it is. In fact, in some cases, making a few changes to ready-to-eat grocery store items can vastly improve their taste. Take store-bought cans of frosting. Though we don't blame anybody for slathering that delicious spread right on top of a cake, cupcakes, or brownies after opening the lid, throwing in a pinch of salt or some vanilla extract and giving it a good whip with your mixer before putting that store-bought icing to use will do wonders for the dessert topping.

Meanwhile, if you've got a jar of chocolate frosting stashed away in your pantry, you can easily take it to the next level with the help of your morning joe. Similar to how mixing coffee into chocolate cake or brownies will amp up their flavor, taking 1 teaspoon of instant coffee powder (or its stronger cousin, espresso powder), diluting it with ½ a teaspoon of hot water, and folding it into your canned chocolate frosting will give the spread a serious flavor boost. The hack is part of what makes Ina Garten's chocolate cake so good, and it might even fool some people into thinking your chocolate frosting is homemade.

While there's a time and a place for coffee-flavored frosting, that's not what you'll get when you employ this flavor-boosting store-bought frosting hack. Rather, because coffee and chocolate share complementary flavor profiles, your jarred icing will develop an even richer and more complex chocolate flavor when the two ingredients are combined. The bitterness from the instant coffee powder will also help balance out the familiar sugary sweetness of store-bought icing that can make it difficult to eat.

In addition to a boost of flavor, adding instant coffee powder to jarred chocolate frosting will also give the topping a slight caffeine boost, which is worth noting for those strongly affected by caffeine or if children are eating your frosting-covered dessert. Though the additional energy from the beverage isn't too significant (roughly 15 milligrams for the entire jar), decaf coffee powder can be used in place of regular to give your store-bought chocolate icing the same flavor boost without the caffeine kick.

If you don't have any instant coffee powder available, mixing ¼ cup of brewed coffee into your jarred frosting will give you the same flavor-boosting effect; however, it also might make your icing a bit runny. If that's the case, you can thicken it by slowly beating in sifted powdered sugar until it reaches your desired consistency.