Anal-Retentive Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

I don’t like con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar and I don’t like frost­ing with melt­ed choco­late. Sue me.

I recommend against poop emoji cupcakes.
  • Ingre­di­ents!
  • 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
  • 1⁄2 cup (1 stick) unsalt­ed but­ter, softened
  • 1⁄2 cup gran­u­lat­ed sugar 
    • Options: Coconut sug­ar or brown sugar
  • 1⁄2 cup unsweet­ened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp. vanil­la extract
  • Pinch of salt
  • 2–3 tbsp. whole milk, half and half, or cream; might need a lit­tle more
  • Tools!
  • Stand mix­er (not required, but makes things easier)

I don’t like con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar: They use corn­starch to keep it from clump­ing and it tastes bad to me. 

I also don’t choco­late frost­ing recipes that use choco­late chips. I’ve rarely been able to melt choco­late suc­cess­ful­ly with­out over­heat­ing it or hav­ing it come out lumpy or gritty.

Avoid­ing the choco­late is easy: I can use cocoa pow­der and sug­ar instead of choco­late. But most recipes spec­i­fy con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar. Wat do?

Well, I could use a blender to make gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar into con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar, then sift it into the recipe. That’s messy and time-con­sum­ing, though. 

But I looked around and final­ly locat­ed a way to make choco­late cream cheese frost­ing with cocoa pow­der and gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar: Use the sug­ar to make a sim­ple syrup, then com­bine with the oth­er ingredients.

Bet­ter yet: It opens the door to oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties: Instead of con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar or white gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar, you can use brown sug­ar. Or coconut sug­ar. Or a honey/maple hybrid.

I won’t get into that here; I might add more ver­sions later.

Directions

In a small saucepan, com­bine the sug­ar with 2 tbsp. milk, half and half, or cream.

Heat gen­tly, stir­ring, until sug­ar dis­solves into a syrup. Cool to lukewarm.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and but­ter until smooth and fluffy.

Grad­u­al­ly add cocoa pow­der to avoid lumps (sift­ing it works too). Beat until ful­ly com­bined and even­ly chocolatey.

Slow­ly add the cooled sug­ar syrup while mix­ing. Mix until smooth.

Add vanil­la and a pinch of salt. If frost­ing is too thick, beat in a lit­tle milk/cream, a tea­spoon at a time, until spreadable.

For firmer tex­ture, refrig­er­ate 15–20 min­utes before frost­ing your cake or cupcakes.