How to Make Frosting

By: Allrecipes Staff

Once you discover how easy it is to make delicious homemade frosting, you'll never go back to store-bought!

We made a tangy cream cheese frosting recipe to go on our banana cupcakes.

1. This recipe made enough frosting to spread on one dozen cupcakes. If you'd like to pipe the frosting on your cupcakes, double the recipe.

Tangy Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-ounce package of cream cheese
1/3 cup butter
1 1/2 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar (add the larger amount of sugar for a stiffer consistency)
Pinch of salt

2. Before you begin, you want your ingredients to be at cool room temperature--not refrigerator-cold, but not soft enough to spread on toast.

If the cream cheese and butter are too cold, they'll be too firm to mix easily; if they're too warm, your frosting will be very soft and may be difficult to use.
Start by beating the cream cheese until smooth.
You can also use a food processor to make frosting instead of an electric mixer.

3. Add the butter and beat to combine, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.

4. Beat in the confectioners' sugar and the pinch of salt. Ingredients such as powdered sugar and cocoa powder should be sifted before you add them to the mixing bowl. While you can often beat out any lumps with vigorous mixing, you might still end up with a few--which will be especially problematic if you're using the frosting to pipe decorations on a cake.

5. Add the sour cream and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

6. Your frosting is now ready to use--it's as easy as that! If you need to refrigerate it before using, bring it back up to room temperature, return it to the mixer, and beat it for a minute or so for the best consistency.