This is my go-to recipe for cream cheese frosting for birthday cakes! I love it because it is not overpowering in the sugar department, but still sweet enough to make your tastebuds happy!
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Mmmm Cream Cheese Frosting
Cake, cupcakes, pumpkin bars, cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies, and more. Cream cheese frosting is so good on so many things.
Making it from scratch is nice so you can control how sweet it is. Often times cake frosting is just too sweet for me and I scrape it off. When making it from scratch, you have control over what goes into it.
Natural Alternatives
Our family does our best to avoid artificial dyes and really artificial anything.
There is just so much evidence out there that proves its harm, especially in young kids.
So we opt for healthy alternatives, especially if we are buying it for our family and home.
While starting my natural living journey in Korea, I used dried berries in powder form to get color variations for my daughter’s birthday cake. After moving back to America, I found a natural food dye company at our Natural Grocers store in Colorado. You can also buy it here.
This was much easier for me to use and find so we now use this to color our frostings. Something to know about natural food coloring is that it won’t have the same pop of color like artificial colorings.
I think it is a very lovely coloring and using two packs will darken up your frostings.
In the picture above is the cream cheese frosting recipe you are here for.
In this photo I doubled the recipe and mixed it with 1 pack of the Color Kitchen food coloring. I could have darkened it by doing another pack but I liked how it turned out so it wasn’t necessary!
One thing to know is that if you expose the natural food coloring to heat (and this really goes for any natural food coloring) you will likely loose the color all together.
Mixing it in your cake batter and then baking it will likely result in extremely faded to no color.
How to Make Cream Cheese Frosting
Equipment and Directions
Fellow mamas to little people, I don’t like to over complicate things, here is how easy it is to make this!
- In a bowl or standing mixer – mix the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract.
- Make sure it is all creamed together well.
- Then add your powdered sugar slowly so that it doesn’t fly in your face and up your nose!
- If you’re not adding food coloring in, then your done! You’re ready to frost!
Because this recipe calls for a significantly reduced powdered sugar amount, compared to most, I like to sift some einkorn all-purpose flour in before adding color.
This helps for piping the frosting and holding together better.
Easy-peasy! And it won’t be too sweet that you or your guest will feel the need to scrape it off your cake! Speaking of cake, if you’d like a perfect recipe for a birthday cake check out my einkorn birthday cake recipe here!
Let me know in the comments if you make this Cream Cheese Frosting recipe and how your family liked it? Was it just right and not too sweet?
Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Proverbs 16:24
Cream Cheese Frosting
Equipment
- 1 kitchen aid (bowl and hand held mixer can be substituted)
Ingredients
- 1 8 oz cream cheese (room temperature)
- 1 stick (110g) butter (room temperature)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1½ cups (225g) powdered sugar
Instructions
- In a bowl cream together 1 8 oz cream cheese 1 stick (110g) butter, and 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Slowly add 1½ cups (225g) powdered sugar and mix on low speed.
- Once entirely mixed together it is ready to frost your dessert or at this point you can add in your food coloring.
Notes
- If this recipe is not sweet enough, you can add up to 2.5 cups of sugar to make it to your liking.
- Adding a little flour will help your frosting have a thicker consistency, without making it sweeter. I do this when decorating cakes! I recommend sifting 1/4 cup of einkorn all-purpose flour.
- Food Coloring: I like to use natural food colorings like dried fruit that has been made into a powder or I use Color Kitchen Food Coloring. I buy mine from Natural Grocers but you can also find it on Amazon here.
- I double this recipe when making a double layer cake and will have enough leftover to frost a few cupcakes or freeze for a later date.
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