Cream cheese frosting will play with—and perk up—cakes and quickbreads not only of the root vegetable variety, but chocolate, vanilla, fruit, spiced, any flavor really. The spreadable, tangy cheese adds an unexpected savoriness to frosting that is often overly saccharine, or worse—forgettable—and swiped off and into the trash.
Though it requires few ingredients and little-to-no know-how, this belovedly basic frosting can still be challenging to nail flavor- and texture-wise. A cream cheese frosting that delivers the desired tang and punch can be heavy, dense; a delightfully airy one, on the other hand, might not taste like anything other than powdered sugar.
In fine-tuning the flavor and mouthfeel, think of cream cheese frosting like an edited buttercream. The build is the same: Softened, unsalted butter gets whipped with a slightly-more-than-equal amount of icing sugar. (Try cultured butter for an even bolder icing.) But here, we replace some of that spready, creamy butter with similarly luscious, full-fat cream cheese. Two parts butter to one part cream cheese keeps the frosting light, while the vinegar and salt amp up the cream-cheesiness. For a spread that’s somewhere between sturdy frosting and drippy glaze—say for cinnamon rolls—simply up the heavy cream tablespoon by tablespoon, until you reach the desired consistency. —Coral Lee
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