Frosting and powdered sugar are commonly used in western-style cakes, but there is still a big difference between them. Frosting is used for decoration, while powdered sugar is made by grinding sugar into fine powder and adding a small amount of starch (about 3%) to prevent it from forming lumps and making powdered sugar. Frosting is a sweet coat for cakes and other baked goods. It is a smooth milky white sugar decoration product crystallized from syrup, which is generally used for icing Napoleon pastry, finger pastry, frosted cupcakes and some cakes. A bright non-stick coating can be formed on the surface of the cake.

Frosting is mixed with corn starch, which is more used to decorate the surface of finished cakes, but powdered sugar should be extremely fine sugar, which is used in the process of cake making. Especially when making cookies with patterns, the effects of powdered sugar and granulated sugar are different.

Sugar powder is divided into white sugar powder and rock sugar powder. The former is usually used for cooking western food, while the latter is mostly used as a sweetener for high-end drinks. At present, there are two main production methods of sugar powder. One is spray drying, that is, white sugar is made into high-concentration aqueous solution, which is made by vacuum spraying and drying. It has the characteristics of uniform powder and good water solubility, but the production cost is high, and there are high requirements for equipment and technology. At present, only a few developed countries in Europe and America have a certain amount of production. Another way is to directly crush white sugar or rock sugar with a pulverizer.