Cream Cheese Chaos
The hunt for the perfect cream cheese icing
I was planning on making a carrot cake this week but I quickly realised that it would be a crime to share a carrot cake recipe without a good cream cheese icing which led me down a huge rabbit hole. Cream cheese icing is arguably one of the best, it’s tangy, not too sweet and just overall delicious when done right but it’s a total pain to make. It always seems to be either split, sloppy, too buttery or have something else wrong with it. You would have thought that after years making cakes I’d have got to grips with it but to be honest I just tend to stick with trusty old Swiss meringue buttercream, ganache or whipped mascarpone, I’ve never dedicated the time to perfecting a cream cheese icing until now!
My main goal was to create a recipe that is delicious, 100% reliable and not sloppy, I wanted something stable enough to be used for building tall cakes without it sliding all over the place. One thing that I wasn’t too concerned about was getting a silky smooth finish, sometimes it isn’t possible to create a recipe that ticks every single box and I knew this would be one of those times. In some cases the best option is just to mix and match so if I wanted a cream cheese filled cake with a perfectly smooth outside I’d just use SMBC or white chocolate ganache on the outside.
Ratios
I wanted to try out a a few different methods of making it but first I wanted to get to grips with an approximate ratio of cream cheese:sugar:butter.
Cream cheese: this is, of course, cream cheese icing and it needs to be the star of the show, there’s no point in making a cream cheese icing that doesn’t taste of cream cheese. I found that recipes that contained less than 50% cream cheese just didn’t hit the spot for me, I need it to be cheesy. A higher percentage of cream cheese does make it more prone to splitting but I’ve got solutions for this later on!
Sugar: the quantities of sugar in the recipes I looked at varied hugely, for me one of the best things about this icing is that it isn’t too sweet so in my first test I went with 25%, which is actually lower than most recipes call for but even then it was slightly too sweet for me so I went for around 20% or lower.
Butter: Some butter is usually necessary in cream cheese icings (although not always), the purpose of it is to add more fat stabilising the frosting and giving it a firmer consistency, in general the more butter the more stable but because I insist on having at least 50% cream cheese it somewhat limited my options when it came to butter so I stuck with around 25-35%.
Other: I also played around with cream and white chocolate as you’ll see when we get to my test recipes, when using white chocolate I just replaced the sugar with it and used 25%, this works well because the fat in the chocolate adds stability and isn’t ass sweet as just adding sugar. For one test I wanted to leave out the butter all together and in this case I replaced it with 25% double cream.
Splitting
Generally cream cheese icing recipes seem to be fairly consistent when it comes to the method, butter is whipped, icing sugar is added and whipped a bit more, cream cheese is added. The method and order of adding things is SO important when making cream cheese icing, when making other buttercream I’m fairly blasé about temperatures, whipping etc, with other buttercreams most things can be fixed by just whipping it for ages THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE. Because cream cheese has a much higher water content than butter this icing is way more prone to splitting and becoming sloppy. When we beat it we’re essentially tying to force the fat and water to emulsify, this works if the fat percentage is high enough but in this case there’s just too much liquid involved and when we beat any cream cheese/butter mixture too much it splits and is unsalvageable.
So what can we do to avoid the dreaded splitting?
The mixing: The first and most popular is to beat the butter first by itself, add the sugar, beat the cream cheese separately and then mix the two together until just combined. I found that this worked well, you’ve got quite a bit of time to play before it sets up and you don’t need to be too scared of over mixing, as long as you’re not leaving it mixing for ages it’s generally ok.
Temperatures: Having everything at the same temperature also helps to avoid any splitting, we can avoid shocking the butter, causing it to set and become lumpy by using room temperature cream cheese.
Increasing the fat: Playing around with fat percentages is a good way to make it more stable. One way of doing this is using white chocolate as the sweetener, it contains high percentages of fat from the cocoa butter which sets solid at room temperature which bodes well for a nice firm icing especially if you like the taste of white chocolate. Another way in which we can increase the fat is by drying our cream cheese between two sheets of kitchen roll, this removes any excess water, ideally we’d use a high fat cream cheese block but these aren’t commercially available in the UK, if you’re in the USA I would definitely recommend using a block rather than the spreadable stuff. For my tests I used full fat Philadelphia but if you’re in the UK and want a higher percentage cream cheese this is a good one. The final way of doing this is by using a high fat butter or browning the butter before using it, of course this alters the flavour but if you like brown butter then this really hits two birds with one stone!
Getting rid of the butter: It is an option to just get rid of the butter all together but we still need something that will whip so rather than the butter we can use cream, because the fat in cream is fully emulsified it won’t split when combined with cream cheese.
The Recipes
I tested about 7 recipes in total, my aim was to have one overall winner but actually 3 stood out to me and since I’d use them all again I decided to share them all, they’re all good for different reasons so if you’re planning on making something that requires cream cheese icing just choose whichever one suits your needs best! I’ve added pictures of each and although they all look pretty similar you can see subtle differences in texture if you look really closely.
Standard
First up, the most standard this comes together really quickly, it’s easy and relatively fool proof, it’s firm enough to use in a layer cake but if I was adding more than 3 layers I’d still opt to use Swiss meringue buttercream on the outside for stability as it has a soft set that doesn’t harden in the fridge like a regular buttercream. This recipe can easily be modified by replacing the butter with whipped brown butter.
Makes 750g.
200g butter
140g icing sugar
400g cream cheese
Vanilla
Pinch of salt
Allow the cream cheese and butter to come to room temperature.
Whip the butter, vanilla and salt until white and fluffy.
Add the icing sugar to the butter and whip.
Pat the cream cheese dry between two sheets of kitchen roll.
Beat the cream cheese by hand in a separate bowl.
Combine the cream cheese and butter mixtures and stir together until fully incorporated.
Use as required.
This does not do well re-whipping so it’s best to use it all at once.
Keeps in the fridge for 5 days.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC)
I have tried making cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream in the past but every single time it has failed me, until now! The SMBC base has a slightly higher proportion of butter than other SMBC recipes, this means that we can add more liquid in the form of cream cheese, this plain SMBC (before adding the cream cheese) is the perfect texture for decorating cakes so the way I make this icing is to make a plain Swiss meringue buttercream, set some aside for decorating and then add cream cheese to the rest for the filling. This process is a little bit lengthier because you have to make the SMBC first but I think it’s worth it.
Because air is incorporated to this via egg whites and beating the butter it’s incredibly light meaning when the cream cheese is added it gets an almost moussey texture. This sets surprisingly firmly making it great for taller cakes. Because this sets up so firmly this is better eaten at room temperature which is true of most cakes but especially worth noting here.
Makes 500g cream cheese icing and of vanilla 275g SMBC
75g egg white
150g caster sugar
300g butter
Pinch of salt
Vanilla
250g cream cheese
Allow the cream cheese and butter to come to room temperature.
Combine the sugar and egg whites and heat over a pan of just simmering water until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has reaches 70°C.
Transfer to a stand mixture and whisk until stiff peaks have formed and the meringue is cool then add the salt and vanilla.
Add softened butter first and whisk for at least 5 minutes until fluffy.
Beat the cream cheese by hand.
Mix in 250g of the buttercream, save the rest for the outside.
This can take a decent amount of mixing but don’t over-do it.
The buttercream can’t be re-whipped after the cream cheese is added so it’s better to make up a bit at a time and make more fi you need to avoid wastage.
Keeps in the fridge for 5 days.
Whipped Cream Cheese Ganache
This one probably came out on top in terms of taste! It’s super cream cheese-y and stays a lovely soft consistency. It’s firm enough to use in a 2 or 3 layer cake but I wouldn’t make a super tall cake with it and it’s probably the smoothest of the lot because we’re not trying to force any butter in there. This could easily be customised by using different chocolates, this recipe with gold chocolate would be absolutely delicious! This option comes together fairly quickly, the only down side is that it requires chilling before whipping.
The whipped ganache is nice to pipe with and you can achieve a nice smooth finish on a cake but it isn’t my number one choice for this. If you want a really stable cake, I’d recommend using this on the inside and buttercream or ganache on the outside.
Other things worth noting; you need to use a good quality white chocolate for this, not one containing vegetable fats (something like Callebaut is fine). If you can’t get double cream, whipping cream (35% fat) will still work. If you want to make this more stable, feel free to add 2 leaves (4g) gold leaf gelatine, just bloom it and then add it to the warmed chocolate and cream mixture. I don’t do this often but it’s a good option if you’re in a warm climate and need sturdier cream cheese icing.
Makes 600g
150g white chocolate
Pinch of salt
Vanilla
150g cream cheese 1
150g cream cheese 2
150g double cream
Combine the white chocolate, cream cheese 1, salt and vanilla and microwave for 20 seconds at a time stirring in between bursts until the chocolate is fully melted.
Add cream cheese 2, and stir followed by the double cream.
If necessary blitz with a hand blender.
Chill overnight.
The next day whisk until stiff peaks form.
It’s ready to use.
This is the only icing that can be re-whipped without splitting!
Keeps in the fridge for 4 days.
Cream Cheese Conclusions
Overall I don’t really think there was a winner, once I got my ratios down I was happy with every single one of these recipes and would use them all again. For me Swiss meringue is probably the most convenient as it’s something I’d usually have anyway and I’m a fan of using Swiss Meringue on the outside of the cake for a silky smooth finish but I would use the others again too, I can see myself using the whipped cream cheese ganache in loads of contexts, not just cake!
This is really useful as cream cheese icing is so annoying! Plus I got to taste them all 😋
Wild thought. BUT, do you think an Italian meringue with honey would be able to hold up to the cream cheese smbc recipe? Possibly even more stable?? I just need a frosting for a corn/peach basil cake n rlly wanna add honey flavour but don’t wanna destroy the frosting !