This is my family favorite BEST cream cheese frosting recipe! It goes great on Carrot Cake, Red Velvet Cake, and just about any other flavor cake or cupcake you can imagine. I’ve been making this cream cheese icing for years!
If I had things my way, every cake and every cupcake would be be buried beneath a mountain of cream cheese frosting.
Not buttercream — Never rarely buttercream — always and only cream cheese. For someone with such a rampant sweet tooth, it’s alarming the number of times I’ve turned down a slice of cake or a sky-high frosted cupcake because the buttercream just makes my teeth hurt (OK full disclosure I have a buttercream recipe coming up on the blog next month, and it’s delicious, but cream cheese frosting will always win over my heart, even over my favorite chocolate frosting).
While buttercream frostings are usually too sweet, cream cheese frosting I could eat with a spoon, and this recipe is every bit as versatile as buttercream — it’s sturdy, pipe-able, can be dyed, and, most importantly, it’s delicious.
Tips for Making Cream Cheese Icing:
- Make sure that you are using full-fat brick cream cheese, not low fat or spreadable cream cheese (which is usually sold in a tub rather than in brick form).
- I always like to use unsalted butter and add a dash of salt so that I have complete control over the flavor of the frosting. However, if you only have salted butter on hand then just omit the salt called for in the recipe.
- Make sure you allow your cream cheese and your butter to soften before making your frosting! Softening the butter and cream cheese ensure that your ingredients will combine well and be lump free.
- If you intend to pipe your frosting, I recommend sifting your powdered sugar before mixing it into your butter/cream cheese mixture, as small lumps of sugar can clog up your piping tips, especially if you’re using a smaller tip.
Can cream cheese frosting be used for piping?
- Yes! Especially with this recipe because it is nice and thick. Now, this frosting (as with most) is prone to melting in hot weather, but it pipes nicely and as you can see in the photos it holds its shape neatly as well.
How do I make my cream cheese frosting thicker?
- What I love about this recipe is that it already makes a nice thick frosting, but if needed you can add more powdered sugar to make your cream cheese frosting even thicker. I recommend adding about 2 Tablespoons at a time until the desired thickness is reached. Alternatively you can add cornstarch… see more on that below.
Can I add cornstarch to my cream cheese frosting?
- Yup! While this recipe does not call for it, if you need a particularly stiff frosting or are looking to make your frosting thicker without making it sweeter, you can add cornstarch (in fact, I use this technique for my carrot cake cookies). I don’t recommend adding more than a few Tablespoons, so start with just one Tablespoon at a time until desired thickness is reached.
Alright, while (in my humble opinion) cream cheese frosting goes great with everything, there are certain cakes and cupcakes that complement it particularly well. Wednesday I’ll be sharing one of my favorite cupcakes with you — the exact cupcakes seen in the photos above.
Can you guess what flavor they are???
How to Make Cream Cheese Frosting
Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter softened (113g)
- 8 oz cream cheese softened (brick-style, not spreadable) (226g)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 4 cups powdered sugar* (500g)
Instructions
- Combine butter and cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer (or you may use an electric mixer) and beat until creamy, well-combined, and lump-free.
- Add vanilla extract and salt and stir well to combine.
- With mixer on low, gradually add powdered sugar until completely combined.
- Use to frost completely cooled cake or cupcakes.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Courtney
I am planning on trying this for my daughter’s birthday. 30 hefty cupcakes and a 6in 3 layered cake. Would doubling it be enough?
Sam
Hi Courtney! I think it could probably work. You may want to go 2.5 just to make sure you have enough. 🙂
Cammy Bentley
It was delicious! I piped it on white cake cupcakes and it tasted so good with it. I didn’t have any brick style cream cheese on hand, instead I used spreadable, and it came out very fluffy and smooth. I never had cream cheese so fluffy! Also, I like not very sweet things, so I used about 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar. I also used vanilla bean paste instead of extract.
Christopher
We have a 3 way competition going and this looks extremely tasty. I’m using this recipe. Thank you.
Alice
Hi, do you recommend adding food colouring to this if you wanted to do a vintage style red velvet cake with fancy piping?
Thank you,
Alice
Sam
Hi Alice! If you want to color the frosting, I would stir the coloring in briefly at the end. 🙂
Tina A
I just made it, I used only 3 cups sugar since my Husband doesn’t like things too sweet. He loved it and I did too!!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We are so happy it was a hit, Tina! 🩷
Naomi
waaay too sweet. so much powdered sugar you can feel the texture. i am now left with a huge amount of frosting that i cannot eat.
Sam
Hi Naomi! I’m sorry to hear this happened! This makes enough to cover a 2 layer 8 or 9 inch cake or 24 cupcakes. You can always reduce the ingredients to reduce the amount of frosting in the end. It should be very smooth so you shouldn’t have any texture issues. 🙁
Shay M
everytime I use this recipe it doesn’t come out right, it’s always to soft and doesn’t pipe well or hold its shape
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We’re so sorry this is happening Shay! Just checking, you are using full-fat, brick-style cream cheese right? And are you reducing the sugar at all?
Shay
I followed the recipe that was given so I decided to doctor it up by adding 1 1/2 additional cups of powder sugar and a little more salt and kept whipping it until it was fluffy. Thank you for responding.
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
It could be that the frosting is getting just a bit too warm then. Popping it in the fridge, adding cornstarch (we talk about this in the post!), or adding additional sugar as you mentioned should help if you run into this issue again.
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
It could be that the frosting is getting just a bit too warm then. Popping it in the fridge, adding cornstarch (we talk about this in the post!), or adding additional sugar as you mentioned should help.
Christine
Made the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Since I did not pipe the frosting on, had much leftover. So next time can I cut everything in half? Also, I will be making the cake receipe in only one 8″ pan, so can I cut that in half also. Thank you so much.
Sam
Hi Christine! You can certainly cut the recipe in half if you want a smaller portion. 🙂
Tarana
Hi! Do you have any advice or insight on freezing this? will it hold it’s shape after thawing, could I make some ahead of time?
thank you 🙂
Sam
Hi Tarana! I would probably place it in a container and put some plastic wrap or wax paper down onto the surface and then freeze. It should still hold it’s shape upon thawing. It may need a quick re-mixing. 🙂
DS
I just made this. I used cognac instead of vanilla and 1 1/2 cups of sugar which was enough. Four cups seems much too much to me – but that’s just me. I used it, together with a tiny amount of raspberry preserves, as macaron filling and, with these changes, it turned out great The butter and cream cheese quantities in the recipe are perfect. Thank you!
Laura
Loved! Came out perfectly. Thank you!
Theresa
This recipe was excellent. Perfect pipeable delicious cream cheese frosting.
Delphina
Perfect frosting
John
Made a half batch. Delicious and perfect. never made icing before, so I was surprised how easy and great this was.
Sherry Sanders
best recipe I’ve found!
Alex
I am a big fan of your recipes; they always work out perfectly. However this one flopped. It was super runny, and no amount of corn starch salvaged it. 🙁 Followed it to a T. My house isn’t warm (it was actually a cold day); room temp ingredients. Used a kitchen aid stand mixer with paddle attachment.
Sam
Hi Alex! Would love to try and help troubleshoot this, it definitely should not be runny as you described (I just made a batch just yesterday for a lemon poppy seed cake I’m working on and it wasn’t thin). The only thing I can think is was a tub-style or low-fat cream cheese used? Please let me know, we can definitely figure this out!
Alex
It was the full fat + brick style. Philadelphia brand. Really weird because today I used another cream cheese recipe which had about the same ratios and it turned out perfectly.
Maybe it’s just one of those odd things.
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate it.