Making Cream Cheese Frosting – Back to Basics! - Jane's Patisserie (2024)

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An easy guide to making homemade cream cheese frosting! Another one in my back to basics series!

Cream cheese icing

This is probably the first on my blog - a complete guide to just one glaze. Not even a cake per se! Don't worry, I'll be making more classic Jane-style recipes, but things like cream cheese frosting need their own post.

Cream cheese frosting, if you didn't know, is a mixture of butter, sugar, and cream cheese. Every now and then, like with this one, some other bits are added... but that's the basics.

The reason I thought cream cheese frosting needed its own post is because it can be annoyingly tedious to make, especially if you live in the UK. If you don't understand how on earth that could be a problem...just believe it's true.

Shape cream cheese

For example, cream cheese comes in two forms in America. Spreadable, and a block. When the Americans make cream cheese frosting, they use the block mold. It has a lot less water in it, it's a lot sturdier and it's perfect for the job.

When do you live in Great Britain? We only have spreads. Spreadable cream cheese is what we use it forcheesecakes, so I can't be sad... but god, I wish we had a block version. Like so many things.

So! When it comes to making cream cheese frosting in the UK...it's tough. I have a few recipes up on my blog now, with slightly different ways to make it, and yes...they will all now be replaced by this version.

Difficulties with cream cheese

The reason cream cheese frosting can be so difficult is that when the cream cheese is whipped on its own, it becomes more runny. It's not something that really thickens. This isn't helped by the extra water content that you sometimes see in it and sometimes you don't.

I tend to stick to using Philadelphia full fat original cream cheese as I think it works best. The cream cheeses in Aldi and Lidl are also tasty... but other supermarkets' own cream cheeses, for example, have much more water that just floats on top.

When you open a bathtub, sometimes you'll see a little bit of water trapped there, but if you've actually taken your cream cheese and pressed it through a muslin cloth, a lot more can come out. This is the killer. But if you use good quality cream cheese, you do NOT need to remove it. It's just something that might be good to do if you normally struggle with cream cheese frosting!

Butter

When it comes to the butter for the cream cheese frosting, just like ANY OTHER frosting, you want to use real butter. The butter you get on your toast in the morning is not real butter. The kind you want is wrapped in foil and is completely firm when you take it out of the refrigerator.

You want to use real butter because it is much firmer when it is cold again. It will help the cream cheese frosting immensely. The only thing though is that you have to make sure it is at room temperature to make the frosting or it may become lumpy.

Powdered sugar

For icing sugar... all you need is icing sugar. Nothing special here - I personally currently use Tate & Lyle because it's my personal favorite, but anyone will do. Thatvanillais also optional, but I just love the little vanilla pods in the frosting!

Beat cream cheese until stiff

When it comes to making the cream cheese frosting, find the happy medium between beating enough and not beating too much. I was honestly shocked and surprised that this worked SO WELL. You can see in the pictures how thick and beautiful it is!

Add the cream cheese and vanilla and beat the mixture with the whisk (not the whisk). I use colder cream cheese, not room temperature, and it may look a little weird at first. When you hit it, it may seem like there are lumps, but keep hitting. I whipped mine for about two minutes and suddenly the lumps disappeared and the icing thickened beautifully.

You want to beat your equal amounts of butter and powdered sugar together until light and fluffy. For a typical American buttercream you would use double the powdered sugar for butter, but this time you want the same. The desired amount is based on the amount of cream cheese you have at home. You want to keep beating it until it's really nice before you even get close to adding the cream cheese!

Useful quantities

Suppose you have 300 grams of cream cheese, you want half the amount of butter and sugar. That's why you need 150 g unsalted butter and 150 g caster sugar. If you have 250 grams of cream cheese, you will need 125 grams of butter and sugar. Sounds logical? I hope so!

When the buttercream has been whipped for at least 3-4 minutes and is light, fluffy and smooth, add the cream cheese. If there is a lot of water on top you will want to throw it away, but generally I don't squeeze it out.

Top Tip!

My previous recipes and many others can be ugly sometimes - and now I realize why. The order of the ingredients was wrong, the quantities of ingredients were wrong, and so on! Honestly, this cream cheese frosting is life-changing.

I will say, however, that I would never call this waterproof. I don't believe cream cheese frosting is foolproof because sometimes things go wrong. Too much water in the cream cheese, the wrong butter because people don't read my notes on using the right butter, different mixers, etc. But it's damn close!

If you have any problems with the frosting, comment below! Sometimes, like I said, it will still work. There's not much you can do about runny cream cheese frosting once it gets to that point.

Adding more powdered sugar won't help the situation, but you can probably still use the mixture in something else! Make some cream cheese truffles, or use the mixture in an ice cream or something - it certainly won't go to waste! Just do your best to use the right ingredients and try using oneelectric mixerif you can! Have fun making cream cheese frosting! X

TO ENJOY!

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©Jane's Konditori. All images and content are copyrighted. Do not use my images without prior permission. If you would like to republish this recipe, please rewrite the recipe in your own words and credit me, or link back to this post for the recipe.