Cakes or cookies, it was always frosting in my family. I winder if it is one if those regional things?
I thought they were two slightly different things. Frosting is soft and icing is thinner and harder.
Also I moved this to the Cafe and iced it, I mean tagged it.
It was always icing in my house (US West Coast)…
Although most people who put frosting on cakes will still say “that’s just the icing on the cake.”
Frosting on cake, icing on cupcakes.
This is our household definition. There are exceptions though, because some foods kind of fall in the middle. If I make a “cream cheese frosting” for homemade cinnamon rolls, depending on the option, it sets up slightly hard, and it’s certainly thinner than a traditional cake frosting.
While on the other side of the divide, I see “frosted brownies” for sale at the stores where I’d define the topping as thin and firm, which I’d consider “iced” brownies.
I like both.
By either name, I’m distressed that it’s getting displaced by whipped cream topping which imho is too thin.
If you spead it, it’s frosting; if you drizzle it, it’s icing. I prefer frosting.
Icing in the UK (or at least in my experience/locality). Frosting is a term that is sometimes used, but only comparatively recently introduced from the USA.
We called it icing when I was growing up; I think I use “frosting” more now (as @What_Exit mentioned, now I think of icing as something thinner / harder, e.g. what you do with cookies). Either term makes sense though.
As a side note, what’s with the love of CANNED FROSTING. Nasty, nasty stuff. My mother used to use a boxed frosting MIX, which IIRC required adding your own butter. I don’t make cakes often at all, but a basic homemade buttercream is just not that difficult (unless you start down the dangerous path of the meringue buttercreams etc. which are a lot more trouble, albeit WORTH IT).
If it’s a regional thing, I grew up in Pennsylvania and have lived on the eastern seaboard all my life.
I am in the Alton Brown camp - boxed cake mixes? Sure, they do a good job, and cut out a metric ton of sifting measuring, mixing and the like. But I won’t use store frosting because it’s -garbage- outside of making something for someone who specifically wants it.
I make my own buttercream, or more commonly, cream cheese frosting. It’s not that hard with the right mixers, and the time saved by using a box cake makes it a zero sum game.
Exception being boxed brownies, which, for some reason, always tend to be lower in quality than the equivalent boxed cake mix IMHO, but not a big deal because I don’t like or want frosting on brownies anyway.
You and I are clearly soul-siblings!! Frosting on brownies is EVIL. A combination of a) that’s not how my mother did them, so it’s R.O.N.G. Wrong. b) maybe every “frosted” brownie I’ve ever eaten was done with bad frosting. Sure, if it’s frosted brownie or no brownie at all, I’ll eat the frosted one.
I’ve never had any issues with boxed brownie mixes, though I’ve never bought them all that often. I’ve got some recipes for homemade ones that are good, if a lot of work. Costco sells a Ghirardelli brownie mix which has become a staple in our household - very, very good brownies.
I have a book called The Cake Mix Doctor. I’ve made almost nothing from it, but the intro info is worth a read: it talks about why boxed mixes are so much more idiot-proof, either standalone, or with stuff added. Our favorite (not from that book) involves yellow cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, melted chocolage, and (IIRC) eggs / oil, and is called Better Than Sex Cake. Can’t find it online anywhere; I got it from a friend 40+ years ago.
To make it more relevant to the OP, it’s baked in a bundt pan, and drizzled with a glaze - there’s another term for much the same thing! IIRC it is made of powdered sugar, cocoa, and hot water. Now I want some.
Northeast Ohio here (like the OP), with western PA roots. We used both more or less interchangeably. There might be a distinction for homemade toppings, depending on how they’re made, but for commercial stuff where it’s anyone’s guess anyway where it comes from? Could be either.
I think I associate the term “frosting” almost exclusively with cupcakes. I would probably use “icing” for cakes and cookies.
The two terms are pretty interchangeable in my experience, but if pushed I would have said the opposite of the above. Maybe because the Pop-Tarts with the thin hard stuff are called “frosted”.
This is the correct answer, although I certainly grew up using them interchangeably, as most of us provably did.
Icing is the thin glaze on doughnuts, coffee cake, etc. As if it had a glaze of ice on it. It’s often/usually poured on. Frosting is all the rest.
-needscoffee, ex-pastry chef.
You’re not wrong, but that’s why I said “equivalent boxed cake mix”! To clarify, if I buy a default Sara Lee / Duncan Hines cake mix in a box, it’ll do good work across the board. But if I buy either of those two companies brownie mix, it’ll be… somewhat dissapointing. Not bad, but just not quite there.
If I upgrade my purchase, and like you, go with a Ghiradelli brownie mix, then yes, it’ll be nearly as good as I can make from scratch (the secret ingrediant is the two sticks of butter), but generally 1.5-3x what I paid for either of the options above, with a huge variance being because of the various sales.
Since I don’t let myself have a giant sugar and calorie bomb like either option often, I’ll bite the bullet and go with the best option I can which brings us back to the thread - frosting or icing is often a way to cover up or decorate what would otherwise be a sub-par or boring (so quality or visual appeal) baked good, whatever you call it.
This is also my definition. Although I spRead my frosting, I don’t spead it. 
« Icing », for everything.
« Frosting » sounds wrong to my ears.