Chai Buttercream Frosting with Cream Cheese

If you enjoy warm spices and ordering chai tea at coffee shops, this cozy vanilla chai buttercream with cream cheese is the perfect frosting. ☕️ Chai tea lovers will appreciate the warm spiced flavors here that add a nice complexity to a variety of baked goods. This recipe works well for decorating a layer cake, cupcakes, and more.

Jump to:

• Why You'll Love this Easy Chai Buttercream
• 📋 Key Ingredients
• Best Results: Baking in Grams
• Recipe Swaps and Variations
• 🍋 How to Make Frosting Less Sweet
• 📖 Making Homemade Chai Spice Buttercream
• 💡 Pro Tips for Using and Perfecting this Recipe
• ❓ Chai Buttercream FAQ and Troubleshooting
• Instructions for Storage
• More Cozy Recipes
• Chai Buttercream Frosting with Cream Cheese

For the perfect cake and frosting combo, try this buttercream with my dirty chai cake. It literally puts chai in every single bite!

This recipe would also make for a great filling between my Biscoff cookie sandwiches or on top of a these small batch vanilla cupcakes.

If you're looking for additional unique frosting recipes, below are some of my favorites:

• Classics like almond buttercream have their place in baked goods, but this mango buttercream is super fun. Made from freeze dried mango powder, it's like a little tropical getaway in dessert form. 🏝️
• This blueberry cake frosting also uses freeze dried blueberries for authentic fruity flavor, and I did the same with my raspberry cream cheese frosting! variety here. Making one easily led me to create the other.
• Of them all, though, this basil frosting! quite literally takes the cake. Just give it a try and trust me when I say it's delicious and refreshing. 🌿

Why You'll Love this Easy Chai Buttercream

• Versatile - This chai spice buttercream frosting would work great on a vanilla cupcake. It plays nicely with other mild flavors, letting this flavor take center stage.
• Unique flavor - While this is essentially a vanilla frosting with a feeling of warmth from the spices, it has a special "wow" factor to it. It's an interesting and special buttercream to use on baked goods.
• Ideal for decorating - This frosting is easily pipable on cupcakes and works well on spread easily around cake layers, too.

📋 Key Ingredients

This frosting is a hybrid buttercream frosting. It combines unsalted butter with cream cheese for a bit of tanginess.

The full recipe is in the card below, but I'm highlighting a few key ingredients.

• Unsalted room temperature butter – Butter is a fat, and fat equals flavor. And it's important to use room temperature butter. This ensures that the end result is easier to mix, creating a softer, super smooth buttercream frosting.
• Vanilla extract – You don’t need expensive vanilla extract for good flavor; the options at your local grocery store are perfectly fine. I never taste much difference between pricier extracts and more basic ones.
• Chai spice mix - Chai spice refers to a blend of aromatic spices commonly used in chai tea. While the precise combination of spices it contains varies, you'll often find some combination of a blend of cinnamon, along with cardamom, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and even black pepper. Using similar ingredients, you'll make your own chai blend of spices. I prefer making a homemade chai spice mix to add to the frosting instead of making black tea and infusing it with chai tea bags. This way, you can adjust the spices to your liking instead of relying on the particular tea brand or taste for your chai flavor.
• Pinch of Salt - You might not think of it, but salt plays a key role in sweet recipes like this frosting. Event just a sprinkle helps counteract the intense sweetness of powdered sugar. This creates a more balanced and nuanced flavor. Additionally, salt helps amplify the flavors in a frosting or buttercream. In frosting recipes, a little salt goes a long way—typically just a pinch or up to ¼ teaspoon for a batch, depending on the size.

Recipe Swaps and Variations

Chai Spice: If you don’t have chai spice, make your own mix! There are lots of recipes online, but you basically need to use a combination of ground cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger to recreate this spice blend.

🍋 How to Make Frosting Less Sweet

If you find yourself wishing that the buttercream or frosting that you're eating weren't so cloyingly sweet, add lemon juice, lime juice, or white vinegar to your frosting.

Those liquids are all acidic. A drop or two of one of these ingredients will help cut back on an overly sweet taste. The resulting frosting will have a much less cloying test.

This chai cream cheese frosting is less sweet than your typical frosting because of the tanginess from the cream cheese. But you may still want to add a drop or two of one of the acids mentioned above.

📖 Making Homemade Chai Spice Buttercream

This hybrid buttercream frosting combines unsalted butter with cream cheese for a bit of tanginess.

Make Chai Spice Blend: In a small bowl or ramekin, combine all ingredients for your own spice blend before setting them aside.

Beat Butter and Cream Cheese: With a paddle attachment and bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter until smooth, about 2 minutes. Mix in cream cheese and repeat the step for another minute or so on low speed until smooth.

Add Sugar and Vanilla: Add powdered sugar and vanilla extract, mixing until fully combined. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

Flavor with Chai: Add chai spices to the mixing bowl and blend until well-combined.

Prepare Piping Bags: Place chai-flavored frosting into your decorating bag.

💡 Pro Tips for Using and Perfecting this Recipe

• Let baked goods cool before using this frosting on them. Adding a buttercream or frosting to a warm, freshly baked dessert will cause your frosting to melt.
• Want super smooth frosting? Once your stand mixer has done the hard work, spend a few more minutes with a spatula and your mixing bowl. Use the spatula to pop air bubbles in the frosting. To do this, push frosting with a spatula from the middle of your bowl to its edges, watching as the tears and bubbles in your buttercream disappear. Spend 3-4 minutes doing these motions is one of my favorite methods to achieve nice, smooth frosting.
• If you need to thin out this frosting, add a few splashes of heavy cream or milk. That said, I found this hybrid buttercream really nice and easily spreadable thanks to the consistency of cream cheese. It is softer at room temperature than butter is.
• If you need to make a thicker frosting, add about ¼ cup of powdered sugar at a time. Mix until you've reached your desired consistency.
• Dress it up - However you use this this frosting, feel free to dust the end result with some cinnamon, cinnamon sugar, or even add a cinnamon stick on top of the cake or cupcake.

❓ Chai Buttercream FAQ and Troubleshooting

Instructions for Storage

Refrigerating - Either on baked goods or by itself, you may store this buttercream in the refrigerator for 4-5 days.

Freezing - This frosting freezes very well. Store it on its own in an airtight container for 3 months.

Let it thaw and come to room temperature before attempting to use it to decorate cakes or cupcakes.

You can also freeze fully decorated cupcakes or cakes that use this frosting. For more on that topic, check out my guide for freezing cupcakes.

More Cozy Recipes

Looking for more spiced treats? Then you'll appreciate these options:

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