Vanilla Brownie Frosting is the perfect finishing touch to fudgy brownies. Add a sweet creamy vanilla topping on your next batch of brownies!
Brownies are such an easy and shareable Dessert Recipe, and there are so many different versions of them. Whether your favorite is Double Chocolate Brownies, Classic Fudge Brownies, or Chewy Brownies, you can add sweet, colorful, vanilla frosting to make them extra special.
Table of Contents
- Sabrina’s Vanilla Brownie Frosting Recipe
- Ingredients
- Kitchen Tools & Equipment
- How to Make Vanilla Brownie Frosting
- Can this be made ahead of time?
- Nutritional Facts
- Tips & Tricks For Perfect Frosting
- What to Pair With Brownie Frosting
- How to Store
- Frequent Questions
- Recipe Card
- Homemade Frosting Variations
- Related Recipes
Sabrina’s Vanilla Brownie Frosting Recipe
My sweet and fluffy vanilla frosting is the perfect addition to any batch of brownies! The combination of fudgy, rich brownies and vanilla frosting creates a delicious flavor contrast and an ultra-sweet treat that kids are sure to love.
Adding frosting to your homemade brownie recipe is a great idea for a birthday party, bake sale, potluck, or any time you’ll have a crowd with a sweet tooth on your hands. It only takes a few minutes to beat butter, sugar, cream, and vanilla together to make the easy Vanilla Brownie Frosting.
The frosting also makes it easy to add some color and decorations to your brownies so that they fit with any occasion. You can color the frosting to match a holiday, for example, making them pink for Valentine’s Day or green for St. Patrick’s Day. Then pipe it over simple brownies, and just like that, you have a seasonal and crowd-pleasing dessert ready to be served.
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Unsalted Butter: For the start of the recipe, you’ll need softened butter. By creaming the butter, you’ll have a rich base for the vanilla frosting recipe. The butter gives buttercream structure and the fat enhances the flavor of the recipe.
- 6 Cups Powdered Sugar: Powdered sugar is the sweetener in most frosting recipes because of how fine it’s ground. Unlike granulated sugar, light confectioners sugar won’t weigh down the frosting, and it will fluff up beautifully with the butter and cream ingredients.
- 2-4 Tablespoons Heavy Cream: Add heavy cream as a dreamy liquid ingredient to help thin out the butter mixture into a spreadable frosting. Start with 2 tablespoons and add more as needed.
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract: Adding vanilla extract is a simple way to enhance your dessert recipe with a rich, comforting flavor. Vanilla is the key flavoring ingredient in this recipe, apart from the sugar.
- Gel Food Coloring: The food coloring is optional, as you can always leave the white frosting as-is. However, feel free to change it up with whatever color you like to decorate your brownies. The gel texture will ensure it doesn’t make your Frosting too thin.
Kitchen Tools & Equipment
- Stand Mixer: The absolute easiest way to make frosting is in a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can add the ingredients to a large mixing bowl and use a handheld electric mixer to combine the ingredients. Whisking by hand is also an option, but it takes a lot longer to get the same fluffy consistency.
- Rubber Spatula: Use a rubber spatula to transfer the frosting from your mixing bowl to the piping bag.
- Piping Bag: A piping bag with a large star tip works well for this fun frosting recipe. If you don’t have a piping bag, use a plastic bag and cut the corner off to pipe the frosting over your brownies.
How to Make Vanilla Brownie Frosting
Time needed: 5 minutes.
- Cream Butter Mixture
Add softened butter to your stand mixer and cream at low speed. Add the powdered sugar in ½ cup increments. Continue to mix slowly until the sugar and butter mixture is fully combined. Then, raise the mixer speed to medium-high for 2 minutes for a creamy texture.
- Add Liquid Ingredients
Pour in the heavy cream and the vanilla extract. Continue to beat the ingredients until the texture becomes light and fluffy.
- Color Frosting
If you want colored frosting, add 6 drops of your desired color. Thoroughly mix in the gel food coloring before adding more as needed to reach your desired color.
- Frost Brownies
Once the frosting is done, transfer the mixture to a piping bag with a star tip. Then, pipe the vanilla frosting over your brownie recipe in a zig-zag pattern. Finish with confetti sprinkles if desired, and slice the frosted brownies into squares to serve.
Can this be made ahead of time?
Making frosting ahead is a great way to get a jumpstart on your dessert. After mixing the ingredients, you can transfer them to an airtight container and keep the frosting stored in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for as long as 3 months.
Nutritional Facts
Tips & Tricks For Perfect Frosting
This is such a simple recipe, but there are still ways it can go wrong. Remember these tips to avoid common frosting-making mistakes.
- Watch out for Ingredient Temperature
- To get the right consistency for your frosting, you’ll need to let the butter come to room temperature. Soft butter is essential so that it can be creamed with sugar. However, on the opposite end, you want to use perfectly chilled cream straight from the fridge. The cold cream will stabilize the recipe and achieve the thickened texture you need.
- Adjust as needed
- It can take some adjusting to make the perfect frosting. Add the cream slowly, and mix in a tablespoon at a time as needed to thin out the frosting. If the frosting appears too thin, you can always mix in additional sugar.
What to Pair With Brownie Frosting
Brownies: This sweet frosting recipe is intended to frost chocolate brownies. You can add it to classic brownies, Flourless Brownies, Oreo Brownies, and any other brownie recipe you like. If you prefer vanilla flavors, add the frosting to Blondies.
More Desserts: Although this is frosting for brownies, you can also add it to other treats. Spread the easy frosting recipe over Chocolate or White Cupcakes. Additionally, you can use it as a dip to serve with animal crackers, vanilla wafers, or graham crackers.
How to Store
Store: Homemade frosting keeps very well in the fridge for up to a week. If you’ve already added the vanilla frosting to your brownies, cover any leftover brownies in plastic wrap and keep the recipe in your fridge for 3-4 days.
Freeze: You can also freeze homemade frosting. Transfer the frosting to a freezer bag, then keep it frozen for up to 3 months.
Defrost: When you’re ready to use the frosting, let it thaw in the fridge overnight. Then add it back to your mixing bowl and beat the ingredients again to help create the fresh, fluffy texture before adding it to delicious brownies.
Ideas to Serve Vanilla Brownie Frosting
How you frost your brownies is up to your personal preference. You can pipe the frosting on in a zig-zag pattern as suggested in the recipe, or pipe swirls of frosting, or use a spatula to spread the vanilla frosting evenly. Once you’ve frosted the brownies, add sprinkles, sanding sugar, cocoa powder, and any other decorative ingredients you want.
Frequent Questions
Be sure to add your heavy cream in increments so that you don’t end up adding more liquid than necessary. Brownie frosting should have a thick, creamy consistency, so you don’t need to add too much cream.
Although often referred to interchangeably, these two dessert toppings are not the same. The main difference between frosting and icing is consistency. Frosting is more thick and fluffy, while icing is more of a thin and silky glaze.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter , softened
- 6 cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2-4 tablespoons heavy cream
- 6-12 drops food coloring , optional
Instructions
- To your stand mixer on low speed, cream the butter then start adding in the powdered sugar in ½ cup increments until fully combined, then raise the speed to medium-high for 2 additional minutes.
- Add in the vanilla and heavy cream and beat until light and fluffy for an additional minute.
- Add in the food coloring starting with 6 drops until you get to your desired color.
- Add to a piping bag with a star tip.
- Frost in a back and forth zig zag pattern with frosting.
Nutrition
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Homemade Frosting Variations
Chocolate Brownie Frosting: If you prefer double chocolate, you can make your creamy frosting with chocolate flavor. Simply add 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder to the delicious frosting mixture.
Rainbow Frosted Brownies: To make colorful homemade brownies for a birthday party or another special occasion, divide the white frosting into 4 medium bowls. Add red food coloring to one, green coloring to another, blue to the third, and yellow to the fourth. Then, alternate piping different colors onto the brownie recipe and finish it with rainbow sprinkles.
Flavor Ingredients: You can change the flavor of your vanilla frosting by adding a drop of peppermint extract, rum extract, strawberry extract, hazelnut extract, almond extract, or any other flavoring ingredient that you want to introduce to your brownie recipe.
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