sugar-coat 
verb [with object]
1Coat (an item of food) with sugar: (as adjective sugar-coated) sugar-coated almonds...
- Products include chocolate coated raisins, peanuts and Brazil nuts as well as mint imperials, popcorn, mini-eggs and sugar-coated almonds.
- The mice are white and pink sugar-coated aniseeds.
- Tufts University researchers found that children who ate instant oatmeal performed 5 to 12 percent better on spatial memory tests than did children who ate sugar-coated cereal or no breakfast at all.
2Make superficially attractive or acceptable: you won’t see him sugar-coat the truth...
- Anthony takes you behind the scenes, and has no intention of sugar-coating the facts.
- Gibb said: ‘The position will not be sugar-coated for them.’
- The principal sugar-coated it and made it sound like she was trying to take the financial burden off of our parents.
2.1Make excessively sentimental: the film-makers' proficiency is overpowered by their tendency to sugar-coat the material...
- This story is so sugar-coated, sappy, and sickly sweet that I contracted diabetes while watching it.
- As unique as this aspect of the film is, there's no arguing with the fact that this is sugar-coated sappy romance.
- There is a clear affinity between actor and character that spills over into the sunny nature of a film that could so easily have seemed twee or sugar-coated.