The Best Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

This cream cheese buttercream frosting has the perfect balance of sweet with just the right amount of taaaang. With just a few simple ingredients, this cream cheese buttercream will elevate your baked goods to a whole new level. This is not your average cream cheese frosting! The end result is stable enough for tiered cakes, pipes beautifully, smoothes easily, and comes together in minute. It’s so unbelievably good, you’ll be eating it by the spoonful!

Ingredients for Cream Cheese Buttercream:

Here’s what you’ll need:  

• Electric Hand Mixer (affiliate) (or)
• Stand Mixer
• Unsalted Butter
• Cream Cheese
• Powdered Sugar
• Vanilla Extract (I use Magnolia Baking Company)
• Heavy Cream or Milk
• White Gel Food Coloring (affiliate) (optional)
• Silicone Spatula
• Measuring Spoons
• Salt
• Food Scale (Optional, but highly recommended!)

Tips for Buttercream Success:

This Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting is super easy to make, and nearly fail-proof in my opinion. But sometimes we need a little extra help, am I right? These buttercream tips will help you achieve perfectly creamy buttercream, every time!

1. Unsalted Butter: The butter needs be unsalted and room temperature. Unsalted butter allows control over the amount of salt added to the recipe. I’ve found the sweet spot to be about 1/2 teaspoon of salt, this will be much lower if using salted butter.
2. Room Temperature Butter: If the butter is too cold, small lumps can end up in your finished buttercream. If the butter is too soft, the buttercream will be too soft and not the best texture to work with. You should be able to press your finger into the butter and leave an indentation, without the butter falling apart. 
3. Sifting: I have found it completely unnecessary to sift the powdered sugar. I’ve never noticed a difference in the finished product with sifted powdered sugar as opposed to unsifted. That being said, I choose to skip this step to save time. Of course, do whatever you prefer when it comes to sifting!
4. White Gel Food Coloring (affiliate): This is the secret to bright white cream cheese buttercream! The yellow tint comes from butter and vanilla extract. I’ve tried the violet food coloring hack, but always worried about overdoing it and messing up a beautiful batch of buttercream. White gel food coloring eliminates that stress and gives a better result. My favorite is Wilton White Icing Color!
5. Heavy Whipping Cream/Milk: Add cautiously- you can easily add too much, especially in cream cheese buttercream! If too thick, add a tablespoon of heavy cream/milk at a time, until you are happy with the consistency. If you’ve added too much cream, you can add a little bit of powdered sugar, one tablespoon at a time, to help thicken the buttercream back up!

Well, I’ve finally let you in on one of my best-kept secrets – the ultimate cream cheese buttercream frosting! This is, without a doubt, the best cream cheese frosting you’ll ever taste. It pairs beautifully with nearly any cake flavor, especially my Red Velvet Cake Recipe. Whether you’re frosting a birthday cake or topping cupcakes, this will quickly become your new go-to frosting.

Continue below for the easy-to-follow recipe, dig in, and enjoy every bite!

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