Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting

This is the perfect recipe for cream cheese frosting. It’s pipeable, spreadable and will set just nicely for you without running all over the place, but there are a few things to remember.

Full fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese is reliable. Other cheeses are available and may be cheaper however they don’t perform quite the same when you work with them.

This recipe was originally posted with Red Velvet Cupcakes but as I use it a lot for all sorts of things I thought it deserved it’s own post!

Ingredients:

70g butter, softened

200g cream cheese

400g icing sugar sifted

The cream cheese needs to be cold, chilled in the fridge and kept there until you need it.
Drain off the liquid from the pack and discard it.

Beat the butter so it is super soft and ready to go, if it isn’t soft enough let it warm up a bit . If you use it still too cold you’ll never get it to combine in the next stage, leaving you with flecks of infuriating butter!

Add the cream cheese and beat them together until combined. Don’t over beat it (that’s important) – cream cheese loosens and becomes more liquidy the more you beat it so less is best.

Sift in half the icing sugar and beat together, add the remaining half and mix again.

Now you should have perfectly pipeable, spreadable and non-runnyable delicious cream cheese frosting.

If you have overbeaten it (weren’t you listening?) and it’s too sloppy bob it in the fridge for half an hour to start to firm up again before using – don’t be tempted to add more icing sugar!

Use it for piping swirls on cupcakes, spread on carrot cakes the world is your oyster.