The great part about whipped cream cheese frosting is that its uniquely fluffy but rich texture doesn’t require any sort of complicated mixing or delicate folding techniques. In fact, it can be made all together in one mixing bowl without even needing to swap out a mixer’s whisk attachment. What’s even better is that it’s a simple five-ingredient mixture: All you need is cream cheese, cold heavy cream, granulated or powdered sugar, some vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt. Make sure you’re starting with a block of cream cheese instead of any pre-whipped variety, as well as ensuring you have full heavy cream instead of any substitutes.
While you’ll find slight variations across different recipes, the general gist is that you start out by whipping up the softened block of cream cheese in the bowl. You can either add the sugar with the cheese or mix it in after the cheese has been whipped, but either way, you’ll want the sugar and cheese to be fully incorporated before you add the heavy cream. The vanilla extract and salt can be added at basically any point between whipping up the cheese and adding in the cream.
The trick to incorporating the whipped cream part of the frosting is to pour the cream slowly while you whip the mixture at high or medium. Just as with making plain whipped cream, you’ll want to stop when stiff peaks form in order to avoid overmixing.
