Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
This sweet and tangy lemon cream cheese frosting is perfect for piping onto your favorite cakes and cupcakes. Lemon juice and zest infuse the frosting with so much fresh lemon flavor and it pipes like a dream!
This homemade lemon cream cheese frosting tastes so much better than anything store-bought and it can be made in less than 15 minutes!
One of my favorite things about this frosting is that it uses fresh lemon juice, but it’s still incredibly thick and pipes beautifully. There’s also cream cheese and butter in it, which provides creaminess and a little tang.
Like most of my frostings, this one can be prepared a few days in advance or even frozen for later. It’s delicious on top of my lemon cake, lemon cupcakes, spread on sugar cookies, and so much more!
Watch The Full Recipe Video
Creating The Perfect Consistency for Piping
Flavoring this frosting with lemon turned out to be a tougher challenge than I anticipated. Cream cheese frosting is already pretty soft, but adding lemon juice makes it even softer and more difficult to pipe.
I decided to start by testing this recipe with lemon curd (which didn’t have a strong enough lemon flavor), then I tried lemon extract (which was way too artificial tasting), before finally accepting that I needed to use fresh lemon juice and zest.
I started back at square one with my regular cream cheese frosting, but added a tablespoon of lemon juice and zest to it. While it tasted good, it was way too thin and didn’t pipe very well. See the picture above on the left? That was the end result and I wasn’t happy with how it turned out at all.
After several rounds of recipe testing though, I ended up making three adjustments to make this frosting thicker and pipeable:
- Using a higher ratio of butter to cream cheese. Don’t worry, there’s still a whole block of cream cheese in this frosting! However, I increased the amount of butter from my classic cream cheese frosting by ¼ cup. This creates a thicker frosting, but still allows the cream cheese to shine through.
- Adding more powdered sugar. An extra cup of powdered sugar helps to thicken the frosting.
- Mixing in the cream cheese last. Sugar is hygroscopic – meaning it attracts moisture anywhere it can find it. And guess what has a lot of moisture? Cream cheese! The solution: mixing the butter and powdered sugar together first. This coats the powdered sugar in fat and keeps it from getting to all of the moisture when you add the cream cheese and lemon juice.
See the picture above on the right? So much better! There’s plenty of cream cheese and lemon flavor, but it pipes just as good as my buttercream frosting.
Ingredient Notes
Cream Cheese
Buy full-fat cream cheese sold in foil-wrapped bricks. Avoid anything sold in a tub or labeled as “lite” because they contain too much moisture and too little fat to achieve the right consistency.
Lemon Juice & Zest
You’ll need 1 medium lemon to have enough juice and zest to make the frosting. If you want an even stronger lemon flavor, you can add more zest to the frosting but do NOT add more juice. Extra lemon juice will make the frosting runnier and it won’t pipe as well.
Juicing & Zesting Your Lemons
I recommend zesting your lemon before juicing to make it easier. You want to use a microplane and only zest the yellow part of the peel, which is where the fragrant oil is stored. Stop zesting once you reach the bitter white pith (trust me, you don’t want that sneaking into your frosting!).
Once you’ve zested the lemon, you can go ahead and squeeze out the juice. To get the most juice out of your lemon, roll it on the counter while applying gentle pressure with the palm of your hand. This will break down some of the fibrous interior and help it release more juice. You can just squeeze the lemon by hand, but I personally love to use this lemon juicer!
Can I Use Oranges or Limes?
Absolutely! You can replace the lemon juice and zest with an equal amount of orange or lime juice and zest.
How Much Frosting Does This Recipe Make?
This batch of frosting makes enough for 14 to 16 cupcakes or one 9×13-inch cake. For a layered cake, I recommend increasing the recipe by half.
Use It On These Desserts
You can pipe this frosting onto your favorite cakes, cupcakes, or any sweet treat that could use a little extra lemon flavor. Here are a few of my favorite desserts to pair it with:
- Coconut cake or coconut cupcakes
- Strawberry cake or strawberry cupcakes
- Lemon blueberry cupcakes
- Cut out sugar cookies
- Lemon cookies
I hope you love the bold and tangy flavor of this frosting as much as we did! If you make it, leave a comment below letting me know what sweet treat you piped your frosting onto.
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- ¾ cup unsalted butter softened (170 grams; 1.5 sticks)
- 3 cups powdered sugar (360 grams)
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (15 ml)
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
- 8 ounces brick-style cream cheese softened and cubed (226 grams; 1 block)
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large mixing bowl using a handheld mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth.¾ cup unsalted butter
- Mix in half of the powdered sugar on low speed until well combined, then mix in the remaining half of the powdered sugar.3 cups powdered sugar
- Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and mix on low-medium speed until fully combined, making sure to stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice,1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
- Add the cubed cream cheese and continue mixing on low speed until fully combined. I recommend stopping a few times to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl. If needed, you can mix for 30 seconds to 1 minute on low speed to ensure that the cream cheese is fully mixed in and no lumps remain. Just make sure not to mix the frosting too much after you add the cream cheese or it will become softer.8 ounces brick-style cream cheese
- Use to frost cupcakes, cakes, etc.
