Description
Greek yogurt replaces some of the cream cheese for a slightly lighter cream cheese frosting. This yogurt cream cheese frosting recipe is perfectly sweet, tangy, fluffy, and rich. It’s great for frosting carrot cake, pumpkin cake, red velvet cake, or sugar cookies.
Ingredients
- 12 ounces full fat blocks of cream cheese, room temp (about 1 block + just over 1/2 of another block)
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp
- 2/3 cup Plain Greek yogurt, room temp (I used fat free)
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup + 1 to 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
Instructions
- Cream together: To the bowl of a stand mixer, or use a mixing bowl for using an electric hand mixer – add the softened cream cheese, softened butter, and room temp Greek yogurt. Mix on high until well mixed together. Scrape the bowl with a spatula as needed. Add the vanilla extract and mix until incorporated.
- Add the sugar: Add 3/4 cup of the powdered sugar. Mix on high speed for at least 5 minutes, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides as needed. At this point taste the frosting. If you want it to be a little sweeter add 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches your desired sweetness. Keep in mind that I created this frosting recipe to be more on the tangy side, and not overly sweet like most frostings tend to be. Whisk on high for another 2 minutes, or until everything is well incorporated and the frosting has a light, and creamy, smooth texture.
- To use: If using the frosting right away you can spread it onto cakes, cookies, cupcakes, or other baked goods (see post for links to recipes). The frosting is best served when it’s at room temperature. However, it does need to be stored in the fridge for longer pierids of time due to the cream cheese and the Greek yogurt.
- To store: You can make this frosting up to several days in advance and store it in an air tight container in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Allow it to come to room temp before using the frosting.
Notes
Yogurt: You must use Greek yogurt here versus a regular yogurt. The water content in a regular strained yogurt is too high, whereas a lot of the liquid has been strained from Greek yogurt making it thicker.
Piping the frosting: I think you should be able to pipe this frosting into simple designs. However, I have not tested piping with this frosting, nor do I have much experience piping frosting at all. Let me know if you give it a try. 🙂
Decorating with candies or sprinkles: I made this frosting for a pumpkin cake. I decorated the pumpkin cake with candy corn pumpkins. As the pumpkins sat on the frosting they sort of melted. I am not sure why this happened (maybe because of the yogurt?). I have not tried decorating the frosting with anything else on top. To play it safe, maybe add any decorations such as sprinkles, or other candies, just before serving your dessert.
Recipe for the yogurt cream cheese frosting is inspired by, and heavily adapted from Well Plated’s recipe for pumpkin sheet cake with Greek yogurt cream cheese frosting.
