The BEST Cream Cheese Frosting (+ Video)
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The BEST Cream Cheese Frosting – thick, sturdy, and pipeable, plus not overly sweet!
Okay ya’ll! I’m serious when I say this is the BEST Cream Cheese Frosting recipe out there! I’ve tried so many kinds, and they work out okay, but I’ve always struggled with soft, stringy frosting. This cream cheese frosting is stiff, sturdy, pipe-able, spreadable, you name it! It’s not overly sweet like the other recipes either.
See the ripples in that frosting? Yep, that’s proof right there that it’s stiff enough to decorate with. The big difference between this recipe and all those other ones floating around the web, is that this recipe uses more butter and less powdered sugar.
This variation of more butter and less powdered sugar gives the cream cheese frosting a buttery, creamy texture, yet still has that tangy cream cheese flavor to it. Less powdered sugar helps it not be stringy, and the butter helps lighten and fluff up the frosting.
This is seriously my go-to cream cheese frosting recipe now. I will not use any other cream cheese frosting recipe in the future, so I am sharing this recipe, separately, in it’s own post, so you can refer to this post as often as I make this frosting in my culinary creations! Have you tried it this way yet? Make this ASAP!
MORE CREAM CHEESE FROSTINGS:
The BEST Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- 8 ounces cream cheese, cold (I typically use Neufchatel cream cheese)
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Place the cream cheese in a mixing bowl.
- Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth.
- Gradually add the butter 2 Tablespoons at a time, and continue beating until smooth and well blended.
- Add powdered sugar and vanilla all at once. Blend until combined and smooth. (Don't beat too long or the frosting will be too soft to pipe. If this happens, place the frosting in the refrigerator or freezer until it firms back up.) Use for any recipe that calls for cream cheese frosting.
Notes
*You can store this frosting either at room temperature (which is 70 degrees Fahrenheit) or in the refrigerator. Do not go back and forth storing from one to the other, for food safety reasons. Use your own judgement.
YIELD: 1 1/2 cups frosting, which will frost about 12-14 cupcakes
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Welcome!
Hi, I’m Amber! I am a culinary graduate and dessert lover! This is where I share my favorite sweet and savory recipes alongside my knowledge and skills as a culinary graduate. I hope you find something you like!
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327 Comments on “The BEST Cream Cheese Frosting (+ Video)”
Instead of vanilla, use fresh lemon juice. This will help keep the tang of the cream cheese. You can add more lemon juice to suit your taste.
That’s a nice tip, thanks for sharing!
I am going to make this & put in mint extract in place of vanilla. Then frost a chocolate cake with mint chips. Hope it turns out as good as it sounds!
I totalky love this recipie better. I like how this rcipie is more creamy and less sweet the other recipie was way too sweet this one is just right my kids love the frosting and licking the beaters.
Thanks for your feedback Leslie! Glad you liked it so much!
How long is this icing good for? How far in advance can I make this?
I would say 1 week in the refrigerator. You may need to re-whip it a little bit if it releases some liquid/separates at all.
I love cream cheese frosting….even on graham crackers! I will pin this recipe and make it the next time I have a craving for cream cheese frosting. Thanks!
I try not to make cream cheese frosting too often because I could totally see myself finding anything to spread it on. Haha. Love the graham cracker idea!
I love this picture! Makes me want to lick the beaters. 🙂 I personally love vanilla in my cream cheese frosting!
Oh I totally lick the beaters! And I love vanilla in my frosting too!
My husband gets to lick all the good recipe beaters and and scrape the bowls clean, then he gets to clean up and dishes. Good trade off don’t you think.
Haha! For sure! My husband helps do dishes even when he misses out on the licks, but he’s awesome like that!
This should be a staple in any home! The recipe I use is very similar to this, but I add a tiny dash of lemon juice. I seriously just want to eat a spoonful for breakfast!
I’m seriously intrigued by the lemon juice!
Lemon extract works better. Lemon juice in the icing can make it spoiler quicker.
**spoil**
I really love that you are willing to share your knowledge about recipes and also HOW TO MAKE THINGS LOOK REALLY PRETTY. Too many people who have this kind of knowledge like to keep it all to themselves. Grateful your not like that! I follow your blog on a regular basis!
Thank you Jan! I really do want to share what I know with my readers! Why not?! Thanks for following along!
A good cream cheese frosting recipe is always good to have around! Thanks!
For sure! This recipe has changed my life 🙂
Makes a great treat as the filler for a sponge cake pumpkin roll and by adding a shot of white rum (or rum flavoring) steps it up to pleasing without being a no-no.
Mmm this looks delicious! I need to make some, but then I need to decide what to put it on (otherwise I think I’ll just eat it by the spoonful!)
Oh my heck, anything! Did you see the comment about graham crackers! I die!
When I was a kid my friend’s mom decorated birthday cakes for them and she would always let us use all of the leftover colored frostings on graham crackers 🙂
That’s awesome! 🙂
I am going to try your cream cheese recipe…it will be awesome I know . Can’t wait to see your other recipes.
Cream cheese frosting is my favorite! This looks perfect!
Mine too! Thanks Jessica!
Would this recipe work for a Black Forest Cake? I thought perhaps also adding a little cherry flavor to the frosting could go with the cake. What do you think? I need help, because I am making this cake for my nephew’s wedding and it will be his Grooms cake. Thanks
You can swap out the vanilla for pure cherry extract/oil. If you use oil, start with less and add more to taste, because oil is stronger than extract. Black Forest Cake typically has ganache on the outside, and cherry pie filling in between the chocolate cake layers, but you can totally go for the cream cheese frosting. I think it would still taste delicious. Maybe put a layer of ganache in the center, let it stiffen/harden/dry a bit then top it with the cherries before placing the top cake layer on. There really is no wrong way to do a cake, just whatever your preferences are. Good luck! Let me know if you have any more questions. Also, whatever you use for the outer frosting, it’s great to pipe a thin layer around the edges of the cake before filling it, so when you stack your layers the filling doesn’t squeeze out the edges and get in your frosting. Here’s a great image for what I’m talking about: http://cakesontheside.blogspot.com/2010/04/tip-o-week_19.html
Mrs. Davis, An authentic Black Forest is frosted with a Kirsch Whipped Cream. I got a gold medal, and Best of Show Trophy, with my Black Forest Cake. A whipped cream will not hold up much beyond refrigeration, so when my GM, at Ramada Inn, asked me to put a Black Forest Cake on the Dessert Cart (I was the Pastry Chef at our Ramada Inn for a few years), I used a Kirsch Mock Whip Frosting. A Mock Whip Frosting is the texture of a Chantilly Whipped Cream. It held up great the entire time it was on the Dessert Cart. It’s usually filled with dark cherries, pitted, cut in half, and macerated in a Kirsch Simple Syrup. I decorated it with 3D little trees made with melted dark chocolate. Cream Cheese Frosting does not belong on a Black Forest Cake, nor does it belong on a Red Velvet Cake. The original, authentic frosting for that is an Ermine Buttercream. Hope this helps.
Cream cheese frosting is my fav, love it!
Mine too!
Thanks for sharing with all of us. I plan on making a butter pecan layer cake using two 8 or 9 inch pans. Will this make enough frosting? I live in Philly so I automatically love cream cheese!
That sounds like a great idea! I would double the recipe for 3 cups of frosting especially since it’s a layered cake.
Does the cake or cupcakes need to
Be refrigerated when they have cream cheese frosting on them? Thanks!
Cream cheese frosting is one of those things that can be either or but not both. Once you make it, you either leave it at room temperature or keep it refrigerated. It’s when you move it back and forth from room temperature to a cold refrigerator that it might not be safe to eat anymore. I have mostly kept this frosting at room temperature because I put it in cookies, cakes, or on cinnamon rolls.
Hi there, has anyone made this and been able to pipe with it? As in make swirls on top of cupcakes that actually look like swirls, not a gloomy mess like I always seem to end up with… I have been searching for years it seems for a pipeable cream cheese frosting and every recipe I have tried is far too runny – does anyone know how well this pipes or do you have a photo?
Can’t wait to try this out, thank you so much for sharing this recipe! x
I have used this frosting to pipe in or on top of cookies so far and it really SO amazing! Here is a link to show the piped frosting I did for some sandwich cookies, (I have some photos of it piped before I sandwiched them): https://www.dessertnowdinnerlater.com/2014/03/carrot-cake-whoopie-pies/
Or you can check out another cookie I used it to pipe on top of in my instagram post.
This is my go to recipe for all my cream cheese frosting and filling needs! It pipes beautifully ❤️
I’m so glad to hear that Shana!
Would this work on cutout sugar cookies? I don’t like royal icing and i can never seem to find a good frosting for this type of cookie?
Hi Stacy,
I use this frosting for sugar cookies all the time like these Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies: https://www.dessertnowdinnerlater.com/2014/10/cinnamon-roll-sugar-cookies/
I hate buttercream, so I always use Cream Cheese Frosting.
Hi there, Do you use clear or brown vanilla? I only have the brown one, will this make the icing a cream colour instead of nice and white? Thanks.
I totally use regular vanilla (brown) and it looks as white as the images show.
can this work with regular sugar instead of powdered?
Probably not. Powdered sugar is much lighter in texture and helps keep the frosting fluffy. If you used granulated (regular) sugar instead it would be dense and heavy and the sugar might not dissolve completely leaving you with a grainy frosting.
I am trying this looks great! I am doing some red velvet cupcakes. Do you know about how much frosting I need for 24 cupcakes.
I would definitely double this recipe. It depends on how high you pipe the frosting. If you like lots of frosting, triple this recipe, if you like a mild coating, doubling the recipe should be sufficient.
I need 24 cupcakes . Liz HEY Liz hey amber thanks these are great !
Does this harden at all
Hi Taylor, I’m not sure I understand your question. This is stiff enough to pipe and decorate things, are you having problems?
Didn’t work for me. I used regular Philadelphia creamcheese and I followed the recipe step by step. It tastes really (I mean: really!) great but it’s way too runny. I used a stand mixer instead of the hand mixer. Could this be the reason I failed?
I have no idea why it would be runny. The only liquid is 1 tsp vanilla. The hand mixer does work much better for this recipe than a stand mixer. Did you use a whisk or paddle attachment? I honestly can’t think of any reason for it to be runny unless you added more powdered sugar than called for. That makes cream cheese frosting stringy and hard to work with. Sorry!
Amber, I’ve tried again with the paddle attachment (used whisk at the first attempt) with a little less sugar and it turned out great! Thanks for sharing your recipe!
Oh good! Phew! I was so perplexed about what could have gone wrong the first time. Glad you got it to work out!
Amber,
I want to start off by saying, that I NEVER leave comments on blog posts. I am a wife, mother, and crocheter, and I link up to A TON of blogs on a daily basis to help “satisfy my needs and wants”. However, nothing ever HITS HOME and “knocks my socks” off enough to even think about leaving a comment. So you know you either have done something really AWFUL, or REALLY GREAT, for me to be taking the time to write you.
Today is my husbands 39th birthday, and our 5-and-a-half-year-old decided this morning on the way out of the door to school that he HAD to make daddy cupcakes for his birthday and use his new cook tools that Santa brought him for Christmas (not sure if this was more of a good gesture for daddy, or for himself!). I have recently had to come out of work as a nurse (I had a stroke this past September, 3 months before my 25th birthday) so our 2 income household went to 1 overnight. I have done a lot of research on how to cut back on spending, especially when it comes to groceries. Of course, today was the day where cupcakes were NEEDED and there is $0.01 in my bank account and absolutely no cake mix or icing in the house (GO FIGURE!!). I took to Pintrest in a hurry and found a “from scratch” basic cake recipe (shew! I am SAVED, or so I thought.). No matter how cute this 5 year old is, cupcakes with NO icing just would not have cut it. So I took to Pintrest yet again, with the few ingredients I had on hand: enough cream cheese to make it to Rome and back . . . and that was it. Is it frowned upon to slap plain cream cheese on cupcakes?. . . no amount of red sugared sprinkles was going to make that okay. So, I started looking for cream cheese icing recipes. . . low and behold, I came across yours. . . So I dug through the couches in the house and “robbed” my child’s well funded piggy bank (still haven’t figured out where all of it came from!), ran to the dollar store and back home I was. . .
Now, let me say, that for the past 6 years, and a lot of baking under my belt, I have YET to find a cream cheese recipe I would feed to the dog, much less feed my family or guests. . . It was always either too sweet, too runny, too “cheesy”, nothing that I would make 2 times in a row. . . However, as your recipe sits in the kitchen aid, I am sitting here contemplating whether or not eating it with a spoon would be frowned upon, because my finger can not take much more “sticking and licking”.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for saving daddy’s birthday, and from the shaming and time out that was to come, had I NOT pulled this one out of the bag. You SAVED the birthday!!!
Hi Erin,
You scared me there for a minute! I was preparing myself for a rant, but I am SO HAPPY to read that you had a great experience and that you could have birthday cupcakes for your hubby! I totally get it when kids set their mind on having something, they’ve got to have it! 😉
Haha!!! Totally didn’t mean to scare you! My momma always taught me if I didn’t have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all!
Does this make enough to ice a 2 layer cake? I am using a hello kitty cake pan, and I wanted to make it a 2 layer cake with some frosting in between. Do you think I would need to double it?
It makes 1 1/2 cups of frosting. I would double it for sure. Most 2 layer cakes need 3 cups. Sounds like a fun cake! Good luck!
Awesome, thank you so much!
Is this enough for 24 cupcakes?
Thanks.
Definitely double the recipe for 24 cupcakes.
Hi Amber,
Can I use crisp instead of butter. I know how to substitute properly but will it mess up the taste? I want the frosting to stay pure white looking not tinted yellow, which will happen if I use butter. Please respond to bollingwith5@gmail.com PS I just started following you on Instagram. I can’t finish my cupcakes until I hear from you. Haha
CrisCo
It’s just barely off-white with the butter. I actually just finished making this with coconut extract for another recipe, but you could substitute Crisco. Crisco is used in many buttercream frostings, so the texture should work just fine. It won’t have the buttery taste though. If you have butter extract you can put 1 tsp in, or just go without it. Good luck!
Hi Amber ..ur cream cheese frosting is delicious ..but definitely not “pipeable” which is kind of a drag since it is midnight & I dont gave any more cream cheese to make another recipe & I am in charge of bringing the super bowl decorated cake !
Hmmm …I guess this cake is going to be iced but not decorated since it is not “stiff enough frosting” to pipe all the cool things I was going to put on the cake
Try putting it in the refrigerator for a couple hours and see if that helps stiffen it enough to pipe. I use this recipe all the time with no problems. Sorry!
I made this for a cake that we had on Super Bowl Sunday…I thought it was a little odd that it had no milk in it and wasn’t sure it was going to turn out…but it was perfect and yummy. I hate frostings that are over-powered by powdered sugar…this one so wasn’t. It had a lovely sweet cream cheese-y flavor 🙂 Will definitely make it again. Printed it out and put it in the family cookbook!
Oh I am so glad you like it as much as we do! I seriously use it EVERY time I make cream cheese frosting! It’s my favorite!
Hi Amber, let me tell you something, I read this recipe and I tell myself “I really have to do it!” it is absolutely delicious! Is now on my favorite recipes, thanks for sharing it!
Yay! I made it again just last week myself! I just love it! Thanks for your review!
FYI, it’s my new frosting recipe! I’ll do it again tomorrow! 🙂
Awesome! Glad I’m not the only one addicted to it!