A fudge cream cheese frosting is an easy way to add a bit of chocolate nirvana to your cakes, cupcakes and cookies. It is delicious on its own, or you can use it to ice any flavored cake, including classic yellow cakes, coconut cakes, marble cakes, chocolate cakes and peanut butter cakes!
A basic cream cheese frosting is simple to make and a great substitute for buttercream. It is a little lighter and less sweet than buttercream, but has the same smooth, creamy texture. It also doesn’t require a stand mixer or a hand mixer and can be made in just about 5 minutes.
You can easily adapt this recipe to make a wide variety of different frostings and toppings by substituting other ingredients. For example, if you don’t have melted dark chocolate on hand, you can use milk or white chocolate chips instead. Or you could try using a vegan butter instead of the unsalted butter.
The key to making a good frosting is having the ingredients fully softened and at room temperature before mixing them together. To do this, put your cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl and whip them on medium to medium-high with an electric mixer until they are completely smooth and creamy. This can take up to about 5 minutes, depending on the speed of your mixer.
Once the butter and cream cheese are fully whipped, you can add in your powdered sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla and mix it until it is smooth and well combined. You can use a large balloon whisk or rubber spatula to make sure it all gets mixed in well and doesn’t fly out of the bowl.
If you have any lumps in your powdered sugar, you can sift it out before adding it to the frosting to avoid them clumping and creating a big mess.
Another tip is to not add the powdered sugar and chocolate to the cream cheese mixture at once. Doing this can draw out some of the moisture from the cream cheese and cause it to become runny and loose.
It is also a good idea to start mixing the sugar and chocolate with a low speed, then increase the speed to medium-high until you have a smooth and creamy frosting. This can take about 30 seconds, but be careful not to overmix the frosting as this will cause it to lose its fluffy and light texture.
A fudge cream cheese frosting is an incredibly simple and delicious treat that you can easily make for your friends and family. You can add a range of different flavours to it, but I recommend keeping it pretty simple!
You can make this frosting using either American or British cream cheese – just be aware that the UK version will likely be a little softer and spreadier. It can also have a higher moisture content than the American versions so you might need to use a little less in this recipe.
