Best cream cheese frosting for cinnamon rolls

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Melt-in-your-mouth, cream cheese cinnamon roll icing is the perfect topping for your family’s homemade cinnamon roll recipe. It’s also delicious drizzled on cookies or coffee cakes. 

Our homemade cinnamon rolls have quickly risen to be our top post since 2017. It was a recipe the girls were hesitant to share, but they are so glad they did! It’s exciting to see you all making these rolls and sharing your successes with the recipe that we know and love.

Although we love our cinnamon rolls (so much that we made GIANT cinnamon rolls), we know many of you have your own family recipes that you can’t part with. If you’re looking for an easy cinnamon roll frosting to top your own cinnamon bun recipe or store-bought cinnamon buns, this cream cheese icing for cinnamon rolls is the answer.

How to Make Cinnamon Roll Icing

Our favorite cinnamon roll frosting is a simple blend of cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and flavoring. These four ingredients blend together to be melt-in-your-mouth, sweet perfection.

The most important tip for this easy cinnamon roll frosting is to be sure the butter and cream cheese are softened at room temperature. If you melt butter, the frosting won’t have a good texture. Simply use the butter at room temperature. This will give your frosting the best creamy texture.

Maple Frosting or Vanilla Frosting

We love to use maple extract in our cinnamon roll glaze, but if you’d like, you can use vanilla extract, or really any other flavoring you like best.

How Many Rolls Does This Recipe Frost?

This makes the ideal amount for a 9×13 rectangle pan of 12-15 cinnamon rolls. If you prefer just a drizzling of frosting, it will of course cover more.

Storage

Because this frosting is cream cheese based, you’ll want to store it in the refrigerator until you use it. If you have leftovers, you can freeze it for up to 2 months.

To thaw the frosting, move it to the refrigerator and let it sit in there overnight. Please beware of microwaving the frosting to defrost it. It can melt easily and lose it’s creaminess.

How do you make cinnamon roll icing without using cream cheese?

Although we love cream cheese, we realize you may not. You can make a simple vanilla buttercream frosting or powdered sugar glaze if you’d like.

Cinnamon Roll Icing

4.34 from 9 votes

Melt-in-your-mouth, cream cheese cinnamon roll icing is the perfect topping for your family’s homemade cinnamon roll recipe. It’s also delicious drizzled on cookies or coffee cakes.

Servings 12

Prep Time 10 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

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Ingredients US Customary – Metric

• 6 ounces cream cheese (softened)
• 1/3 cup salted butter (softened)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon maple extract (or vanilla)

Instructions 

• In a medium mixing bowl, combine the softened cream cheese and butter using a hand mixer. Blend well.

• Add in your favorite extract and the powdered sugar. Beat until combined.

• After the cinnamon rolls are done baking in the oven and are cooled, spread the frosting over the tops. Put a few sprinkles on top if you'd like.

• Store any leftover frosting in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Video

Notes

The calories shown are based on the frosting being divided 12 ways, with 1 serving being 1/12 of the frosting. Since different brands of ingredients have different nutritional information, the calories shown are just an estimate.

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