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This Sour Cream Frosting is the perfect cooked chocolate frosting for any dessert. It has a super rich chocolate flavor with a smooth and velvety texture and the perfect amount of sweetness – it’s our favorite frosting recipe!
Sour Cream Frosting Recipe
Calling all chocolate lovers and frosting fanatics! Have you tried chocolate sour cream frosting yet? If not, get ready for a game-changing recipe that will forever alter your expectations of what frosting can be.
Unlike standard buttercreams that can be overly sweet or greasy, sour cream chocolate frosting has an amazingly lush, velvety texture. It’s cooked on the stovetop, giving it that incredible creaminess, almost like ganache but with a deeper flavor. This cooked chocolate frosting with sour cream is the creamiest and richest frosting to ever grace a cake, cupcake, or spoon.
Ingredients Needed
- Butter: I used unsalted but salted butter may be substituted.
- Sugar: This recipe needs to use granulated sugar NOT powdered sugar.
- Heavy Whipping Cream: This cannot be substituted. The fat content in the cream is needed for the frosting to set. Make sure the label says “heavy” on it – there are traditionally 2 types of whipping creams sold (heavy and plain old whipping cream)
- Sour Cream: Gives this frosting a smooth ganache-like texture and adds just a slight tangy flavor – it also helps cut the sweetness and richness of the frosting.
- Cocoa Powder: I recommend regular unsweetened cocoa powder, not Dutch process cocoa, which can be used, but the frosting is so rich with regular it may be too much with dark cocoa.
How to make Cooked Chocolate Icing
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in sugar, cocoa, and a pinch of salt. The mixture will be thick and grainy.
- Whisk heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla and instant coffee in a large measuring cup. Slowly add the cream mixture into your saucepan and whisk until smooth. Cook over medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved and is hot to the touch.
- Transfer frosting to a bowl and let cool 2-3 hours until it’s spreadable.
- Use an offset spatula to frost your cake or cupcakes.
Ways to use Chocolate Frosting
This cooked icing is good on SO MANY recipes!
- Chocolate Cupcakes
- Spread of the top of cheesecake
- Red Velvet Cupcakes
- Carrot Cake – yes even this spiced cake goes with chocolate.
Expert Tips
- Remember: Do not boil this recipe. It is meant to dissolve and become hot, not much more than that.
- You have to use heavy whipping cream for the recipe to work. Make sure the label reads “heavy”
- Plan ahead – it takes several hours to set up.
- You can also chill it so it will set up faster. If it gets to hard to spread, microwave it on 20 second intervals, stirring in between, until it’s the desired consistency.
FAQs
Store this recipe in an airtight container in the fridge, but make sure it is room temperature before serving.
Make sure to use heavy whipping cream or the recipe will not work properly.
This is not pipe-able frosting – it’s smoother and creamier and meant for frosting with a spatula.
Cooked Chocolate Frosting Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ cup (113g) unsalted butter
- 1 ½ cups (300g) granulated sugar
- 1 ¼ cups (100g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- Pinch salt
- 1 ¼ cups (297ml) heavy whipping cream
- ¼ cup (61g) sour cream
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee (optional, see note)
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in sugar, cocoa, and salt. The mixture will be thick and grainy.
- Whisk heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla and instant coffee in a large measuring cup. Slowly add the cream mixture into your saucepan and whisk until smooth. Cook over medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved and is hot to the touch, between 4-8 minutes. (Mine cooked in about 4 minutes, but it could take longer.) Do not boil!
- Transfer frosting to a bowl and let cool 2-3 hours until it’s spreadable. You can also chill it so it will set up faster. If it gets to hard to spread, microwave it on 20 second intervals, stirring in between, until it’s the desired consistency.
- Frost top of cupcake with chocolate frosting. Store in refrigerator, let come to room temperature before serving.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
- Be sure to use only HEAVY whipping cream for the recipe to work.
- To cool the frosting faster you can chill it.
- The frosting will set solid as if it’s chilled, so let come to room temperature or microwave on 50% power in 15 second increments to thin.
- If you want to add the instant coffee, it won’t make the icing taste like mocha, instead it deepens the chocolate flavor.
Help! There is no instant coffee in the photo, the list of ingredients needed, nor in the ingredient portion of the recipe itself. Yet in step 2 of the directions we are told to “Whisk heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla and instant coffee in a large measuring cup.” How much coffee? Just the powder, or prepared coffee? This recipe sounds awesome, and as a baker for all my life I’m always ready to find great new frosting recipes. THANKS!!
Sorry about that – I will update – I used to use the coffee but stopped. It’s 1 tsp but it’s optional.
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