A less sickly sweet alternative for butter icing?

[alicet]

I'm just getting into cooking cakes - made some fiary cakes last weekend with piped butter icing and sweets on top. They looked GORGEOUS (and children appreciated them!) but personally I found the butter icing unpleasantly sickly sweet.

Can anyone recommend a good alternative that I can pipe onto top of cakes to make them look fab without the horrible sickly taste?

Cream cheese such a philly with icing sugar (I just mix it to taste, so no particular quantities), it has a bit more of a bite like carrot cake tioping.

Thats a good idea! Will try that next time... Does it take the food colouring just as well?

ohh, never thought of colouring it but I can't see why not, will prob need less colouring as it is a looser mix. I use lots of sparkles and cut out fondent icing like butterflies etc to stick in the piped icing.