Coconut Pecan Frosting - Wheat Free/Grain Free/Sugar Free - kind of a flop!

Coconut Pecan Frosting

I made this frosting to go with the German Chocolate Cupcakes from yesterday, but it really didn't turn out like I'd hoped.  Maybe your luck will be better than mine, I followed a recipe for caramel that looked pretty straightforward and similar to making caramel with regular sugar.  I may try this again another time and post results if I figure out what I did wrong.

1/2 C butter
1/3 C swerve (erythritol)
1/3 C unsweetened, shredded coconut
1/4 C pecan pieces

(Added later to try to fix the frosting - 4 oz cream cheese, 1/4 C confectioner's swerve, 1 t vanilla)

Melt the butter on medium high heat in a frying pan, watching the butter closely, as soon as it browns, add the swerve and stir rapidly until the swerve dissolves and mixture thickens.  Here's where things went wrong, my mixture didn't thicken evenly, it turned out lumpy and grainy with extra butter oozing from it.  I tried adding the coconut and pecans thinking maybe it just needed to cool a bit.  It didn't really make a difference, as you can see in the picture to the left.  It still clumped together in sections with oily butter oozing out.  So I gave up and decided to make half my standard "go-to" recipe for sugar free frosting, which is (for a full recipe, not the half that I used) 8 oz cream cheese, beat together with 1/2 C confectioner's swerve and 1 t vanilla.

After mixing in the cream cheese, vanilla and confectioner's swerve (you can make your own of this by putting regular erythritol though a coffee grinder to make it the consistency of powdered sugar), it turned out pretty good, but still slightly grainy, and not really anything like the caramel/coconut frosting you normally get on German Chocolate cake.  Oh, well......

Probably better to make this frosting recipe:
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 C confectioner's swerve
1 t vanilla
Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding a little milk if it's too stiff.

Calories in the recipe I ended with, including the 4 oz cream cheese, etc. to cover 12 cupcakes:  125 calories each, 1 gram carbohydrate without the sweetener (see the note from yesterday).

Calories in original recipe - if you end up with more luck making it than I did:  92 calories, 1 gram carbohydrate, also not including the sweetener.

If you make the cream cheese recipe at the bottom instead (not what's pictured):  around 67 calories with 1 gram carbohydrate, also not including the sweetener.