Perfect Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting
If you love strawberries, you’ll love this strawberry cream cheese frosting! It has a thick, creamy texture and it’s perfect for piping on cakes and cupcakes.
While I love using strawberries in buttercream and whipped cream, the tang of the cream cheese pairs so well with them here.
Friends request this frosting on both my chocolate cupcakes and vanilla cupcakes, but I think it’s amazing on my strawberry cupcakes. The double dose of berry flavor is always a winner!
Ingredients
The most unique ingredient in this recipe is freeze dried strawberries [paid link].
When I originally created this recipe almost ten years ago, I used fresh strawberries. I got comment after comment about the frosting coming out soupy and not pipeable. Fresh strawberries are too wet for a cream cheese frosting. They can also make the frosting curdle.
The freeze dried berries give the frosting an intense flavor (way more than fresh strawberries) without compromising the frosting’s consistency.
Tip: Although it’s not exactly the same, you can make freeze dried strawberries from scratch by dehydrating berries and freezing them. You can read more about this in my post on fruit powder.
You’ll need a few other ingredients to make this frosting:
- butter
- cream cheese (full-fat)
- salt
- sugar
How It’s Made
To begin, use the paddle attachment on an electric mixer to mix cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy – the same process you use to make plain cream cheese frosting. This should take about 3 minutes on high speed. If you don’t have an electric mixer, you can mix frosting by hand, but it will require some serious elbow grease – expect to be mixing for at least five minutes.
Tip: It is VERY important that the cream cheese and butter be at room temperature before mixing. If the ingredients are not at room temperature, they will not mix together properly.
Mix in salt and strawberry powder (food processed freeze dried berries).
Then, mix in powdered sugar.
Tip: The more powdered sugar you add, the stiffer the frosting will be. If you add less powdered sugar, it will be spreadable but not pipeable.
Pipe or spread onto your favorite dessert!
Expert Tips and FAQs
Many of the common problems with this frosting can be solved by paying attention to the following tips:
- Use full-fat cream cheese sold in bricks rather than whipped cream cheese. The whipped version often costs more and there is no need to buy it when you will be whipping it yourself.
- Make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temperature.
- Use unsalted butter so that you can control how much salt is in the recipe.
- Sift the powdered sugar if it clumps together.
Make sure that you use freeze-dried strawberries rather than dried strawberries. There is a huge difference!
Food safety experts say that you should always refrigerate cream cheese frosting. I live life on the edge and leave mine out on the counter for up to week and I’ve never gotten sick. But, just in case you try this, don’t say that I didn’t warn you about the expert advice.
If you won’t be using it all right away, the frosting can also be kept in the freezer in an airtight container. Defrost and give it a quick whisk before using.
Yes! To switch this recipe up, try making other freeze-dried fruit powders from freeze-dried raspberries [paid link] or freeze-dried blueberries [paid link].
For regular cupcakes, I recommend you use a Wilton 1M tip.
Related Recipes
- Strawberry Cupcakes
- How to Make Fruit Powder
- Homemade Pixy Stix (also made with freeze-dried strawberries)
- Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
- Vanilla Cupcakes
- Chocolate Cupcakes
- How to Macerate Fresh Berries
Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 8 ounces full-fat cream cheese room temperature
- 3/4 cup freeze-dried strawberries
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy – about three minutes on high speed.
- Food process the freeze-dried strawberries until they form a powder.
- Mix in powdered strawberries (you should have about 2 1/2 tablespoons) and salt until fully combined.
- Mix in powdered sugar.
- Spread or pipe onto your favorite cakes and cupcakes.
Notes
- Make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temperature.
- Use unsalted butter so that you can control how much salt is in the recipe.
- Sift the powdered sugar if it is clumpy.
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