This post may contain affiliate links. Another in my series of back to basics! Jane’ style recipes, but things can i freeze cream cheese frosting cream cheese frosting need their own post. Cream cheese frosting, in case you weren’t aware, is a mixture of butter, sugar, and cream cheese.
The reason I thought that cream cheese frosting needed its own post, is because it can be infuriatingly annoying to make, especially when you live in the UK. Cream cheese forms Cream cheese in America for example, comes in two forms. When Americans then make cream cheese frosting, they use the block form. It has a lot less water in it, it’s a hell of a lot firmer, and it’s perfect for the job. When you live in the UK?
I wished we had a block version. Difficulties with cream cheese The reason cream cheese frosting can be so difficult, is when the cream cheese is beaten on it’s own, it gets runnier. It’s not something that thickens up really. This isn’t helped by the added water content that you can sometimes see, and sometimes not see inside it. I tend to stick to using Philadelphia full fat original cream cheese, because I find it works best. The cream cheeses in Aldi and Lidl are also good. When you open up a tub, sometimes you can see a little water just sort of sitting there, but if you actually got your cream cheese, and squeezed it through a muslin cloth, a lot more can come out.
However, if you use a good quality cream cheese, you don’t HAVE to remove it. It’s just something that could be good to do if you usually struggle with cream cheese frosting! Butter When it comes to the butter for cream cheese frosting, just like ANY OTHER FROSTING, you want to use actual real butter. The butter tubs you get too spread on your toast on the morning, is not real butter. The kind you want is wrapped in foil, and is absolutely solid when you get it out of the fridge.
You want to use real butter, as once that is cold again, it’s much much firmer. It will help the cream cheese frosting so so much. The only thing though is you have to make sure it’s at room temperature to make the frosting, otherwise it could go lumpy. Lyle at the moment because it’s my personal favourite, but any will do. I was genuinely shocked and surprised that this worked SO WELL. You can see from the photos just how thick and lovely it is! I use colder cream cheese, not room temperature, and it can look a little funny at first.
Beating them can make it seem like there are lumps, but just keep on beating. I beat mine for about two minutes, and suddenly the lumps disappeared and the frosting thickened up beautifully. You want to beat your equal amounts of butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy. For a typical American buttercream you would use double the icing sugar to butter, but this time you want equal. The amount you want is based on the amount of cream cheese you have. You want to keep on beating it until it’s really lovely, before you go anywhere near adding the cream cheese!
Helpful quantities Say you have 300g of cream cheese, you want half the amount for the butter and sugar. Therefore, you want 150g of Unsalted Butter, and 150g of Icing Sugar. If you have 250g of Cream cheese, you want 125g of butter and sugar. Once the buttercream has been beaten for at least 3-4 minutes, and is light and fluffy and smooth, you add in the cream cheese. If there is a lot of water on the top, you want to get rid of that, but generally I don’t squeeze it out.
The order of the ingredients was wrong, the ingredient quantities was wrong, and so on! Honestly, this cream cheese frosting is life changing. I will say though, I will never call this foolproof. Too much water in the cream cheese, the wrong butter as people won’t read my notes on using the correct butter, different mixers etc. Sometimes, as I have mentioned, it will still end up runny.
There isn’t much you can do about runny cream cheese frosting once it’s got to that stage. Just try your best to use the correct ingredients, and try and use an electric mixer if you can! How to Make Cream Cheese Frosting! An Easy How-To Guide on How to Make Homemade Cream Cheese Frosting!
Beat your butter on it’s own for a few minutes to loosen it. Add in the icing sugar, and beat again – I beat this for about 5 minutes, to make it really smooth. Make sure your cream cheese doesn’t have any excess water – I find it best to add it to a bowl first just to make sure. Add in the cream cheese, and vanilla and beat. At first, it may look a little weird, but just keep on beating. I end up beating it for a few minutes – it can go through a lumpy stage first, but eventually the lumps beat out and it’s smooth and thick! Once beaten – it should be lovely and thick.
If it’s not – read the blog post! Store the cream cheese frosting in the fridge if you are not using it straight away! This is enough to pipe onto 12 cupcakes, or for a 2 layer cake for filling on top and inside! You can use any full fat cream cheese – but make sure to remove any excess water.