Status: Beta

Makes: enough for 24 cinnamon rolls

Takes: 10m, or 30m if you forgot to leave the cheese/butter out

This frosting is what I prefer on cinnamon rolls. It comes out flavorful and sweet, but not too sweet – and the salt helps to bring back some of the complexity of the citrus that would otherwise be lost to the sugar.

Ingredients

• 8oz block cream cheese (room temp, though can be cold)
• 4oz stick unsalted butter (room temp, though can be cold)
• juice of one lemon
• 1 heaped tsp kosher salt
• confectioner’s sugar to taste (about 1 C)

Procedure

If your cream cheese and butter are cold, see the warming trick below.

• Put cream cheese in mixer. Use paddle attachment to cream it at medium speed for a few minutes, until it looks fluffier.
• Scrape down the bowl. Add butter. Cream the combination at medium speed for a few minutes or until it looks homogeneous (no butter flakes visible).
• Scrape down the bowl. Distribute lemon juice and salt around the paddle. Cream again until incorporated (~1 minute).
• Scrape down the bowl. Add confectioner’s sugar, starting with about 1/2 C. After each addition, mix for about a minute and taste. It will go from salty, to vaguely citrusy, to sweet; at about this point it will start holding peaks.
• Apply frosting to something, such as your hand or a small dog.

Warming dairy at the last minute

• Fill a container large enough to contain the cream cheese and butter packages, such as a large pitcher, with 85-95 F water from the tap. (Instant read thermometer in the water stream is fastest.)
• Remove packaging except the paper wrapper on the stick of butter and the inner foil wrapper on the cream cheese.
• Put both in a watertight plastic bag, such as a ziploc. Do not seal.
• Holding the opening of the bag above the water, press the dairy into the water so that the water displaces air from the bag. (You may recognize this from sous vide.)
• Clip the bag to the rim of the container so it doesn’t fill with water.
• Come back in about 15-20 minutes.