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Cream cheese frosting is a baking classic!
It’s perfect for practically any cake and any leftovers are great dolloped onto some freshly cut fruit.
Easy To Make
This is the basic recipe, you can reduce the amount of butter if you want a bit more tang, and increase or decrease the sugar according to your taste.
Dress up with ginger, vanilla bean, or coconut flakes. I’ve listed some of my favorite variations at the end of the recipe.
Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
This recipe makes enough frosting to frost one single layer round cake, a 9x13 quarter sheet cake, or 12-18 cupcakes.
To frost a double layer cake, use 3/4 cup butter, 12 ounces cream cheese, 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, 115g), room temperature
- 8 oz of Philadelphia cream cheese (1 package, 224g), room temperature
- About 3 cups (360g) of powdered sugar (also known as confectioner's sugar), sifted
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Method
1 Beat the cream cheese and butter together: Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter together until completely smooth, about 3 minutes on medium speed. Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl to ensure that the mixture is mixed evenly.
2 Beat in vanilla extract and powdered sugar: Beat in the vanilla extract. With the mixer running on low speed to start, slowly add in 2 cups of the powdered sugar.
Powdered sugar has cornstarch in it that will thicken the frosting as well as making it sweet. Keeping adding more powdered sugar to the frosting until you get your desired level of sweetness and thickness.
3 Spread or pipe the frosting to decorate: Use a blunt knife or spatula to spread the frosting, or spoon the frosting into a piping bag to decorate your cupcake or cake.
Here are some fun variations:
- Add 1/2 a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder and a pinch of salt for a chocolate cream cheese frosting
- Mix freshly grated or dried, flaked coconut to the frosting to make a coconut frosting
- Intensify a vanilla frosting by adding some scrapings from a fresh vanilla bean to the frosting
- Add some blueberry syrup for blueberry cream cheese frosting
- Add a tablespoon of Amaretto or a quarter teaspoon of almond extract for an almond flavored cream cheese frosting
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Links:
Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting here on Simply Recipes
Apple Carrot Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting here on Simply Recipes
Ginger cream cheese frosting from Heidi of 101 Cookbooks
Blueberry Cream Cheese Frosting from White on Rice Couple
Garrett McCord is a professional writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in many print and online publications such as Gourmet Live, Saveur, Huffington Post, Smithsonian, and NPR. Past clients also include numerous food companies, wineries, and distilleries. Garrett writes about cocktails on his website, Coupe de Grace.
Cream Cheese Frosting
Made it for a banana cake. Tastes great. Does it need to be refrigerated?
Hello Bailey,
It’s up to you. I like my cakes at room temperature, and since it’s winter now, my kitchen is not warmer than 65 degrees F, anyway (I have a few slices of red velvet cake frosted in this very frosting on the counter right now!)
But if your kitchen is warmer, or you’ll have the cake out for more than a few days, then yes–refrigerate it. And of course refrigerate any unused frosting (it freezes beautifully, in fact).
I would like to put this on strawberry cookies but I will have to stack the cookies. Will this harden enough after refrigeration to allow for this?
Hello Lena,
No, sadly this will not harden up enough to allow for stacking without smashing the frosting down and making it not look as pretty. Store your cookies in a single layer, if possible. If you absolutely must stack them, put waxed paper between the layers.
Could you add 1/2 teaspoon of peanut butter?
Hi Amy,
D you mean add the peanut butter to the frosting? Yes, but 1/2 teaspoon would not get you very far. Here’s a cake recipe that has a peanut butter frosting I LOVE (no cream cheese, but the texture and flavor is great). But I bet it would be gross on a red velvet cake! /:
Smooth and delicious. I added Madagascar vanilla been paste in addition to vanilla extract for a deeper vanilla flavor. So yummy!
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This recipe looks like a great base for frosting! Will definitely use for my red velvet cupcakes soon.
For Red velvet I would skip the butter and vanilla for a more creamy taste if you have a kitchenAid mixer mix on low then high until all mixed well I used this on my short bread cookies and they were delicious