The Best Cream Cheese Frosting
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The Best
You’ll also find my article on How to Soften Cream Cheese useful.
Cream cheese icing is versatile. It has a mild, yet delicious flavor that compliments any cake.
THE BEST CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
The BEST
I always use an electric mixer to mix
Cream Cheese Icing is a baking classic and can be used on a variety of cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. If you need more of a glaze, add more heavy cream. Need it to stand up sturdy for a layer cake? Add more powdered sugar!
Ingredients you’ll need
This classic recipe has simple ingredients that you probably already have.
- Butter. You need real
butter for this recipe, not margarine. Allow it to come to room temperature before mixing it. - Cream cheese. You can use regular, low-fat, or fat-free
cream cheese in this frosting. However, low-fat and fat-free will not taste as good nor will it be as creamy as regularcream cheese . Yourcream cheese needs to be at room temperature before mixing as well. - Heavy cream. Heavy cream makes the best
cream cheese frosting but you can use half and half or whole milk. - Powdered sugar. Powdered sugar is also known as confectioners sugar, confectioners’ sugar, icing sugar, and 10X. Sift your confectioners sugar before adding it to your creamed ingredients.
- Vanilla extract. Pure vanilla extract tastes the best.
Below are some cakes I use
Ruby Red Grapefruit Sheet Cake with Grapefruit Cream Cheese Frosting
Old Fashioned Banana Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Easy Key Lime Cake with Key Lime Cream Cheese Frosting
Easy Strawberry Cake
Best Toffee Banana Layer Cake
Red Velvet Layer Cake Recipe
Please keep in mind that nutritional information is a rough estimate and can vary based on the products used
updated this post from an earlier version. I made new photos and simplified the recipe instructions.
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The Best Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup real butter room temp
- 8 ounce cream cheese room temp
- 3 1/2 cup powdered sugar (aka confectioners)
- 2 to 3 Tablespoons heavy whipping cream
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Beat 1 stick butter and 8 oz cream cheese until smooth, add confectioner sugar with mixer on low. Add vanilla and milk. Mix until smooth.
- FOR CREAM CHEESE GLAZE: Add more milk one tablespoon at a time until the consistency is like honey, smooth and pourable.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information given is an automatic calculation and can vary based on the exact products you use and changes you make to the recipe. If these numbers are important to you, I recommend calculating them yourself.
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Hi Paula, this recipe looks so good and I can’t wait to put this on those Red Velvet Brownies. I do have a question, do you know how much this will make? Or do I need to double it. Also, if you DO have any leftover haha 🙂 can it be frozen for later? Thanks so much and keep the recipes coming :)……
I don’t know how many cups, I’ll make note to measure it next time. It frosts one 3 layer cake, if that helps. It will easily frost 24 cupcakes. I almost always have Cream Cheese frosting in my fridge, I haven’t tried to freeze it, but I have kept it in the fridge for 2 weeks before.
Thanks for sending me the link! I will use this for sure next time!
Wow – I always imagined that cream cheese was in the recipe too. LOL Shows you how much I bake!
This sounds yummy! I was surprised to see that cream cheese wasn't an ingredient. Thank you for sharing. I cannot wait to try this recipe.