31 Comments
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Claire Bamford's avatar

This is really useful as cream cheese icing is so annoying! Plus I got to taste them all 😋

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Ev's avatar

Wondering how strong the cream cheese flavour is in the smbc? Also wondering how well any of these would hold up to adding gel colour :0! I’ve Used the cream cheese ganache quite a bit and absolutely love that one!!!!!

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

It’s quite strong because it’s still 50% cream cheese which is pretty high! If you’re adding gel colours to any of them they should be fine, you’ll just need to add it before the cream cheese because you don’t want to mix it too much once the cream cheese is in there.

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Ev's avatar

Thank u so much for ALWAYS responding to our questions on here not a lot of ppl do n it’s so so kind of u. (I took ur advice abt jam n i made a cardamom vanilla strawberry rhubarb one n its so beyond good)

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

No problem! I can’t even remember what I said about jam but that combination sounds elite!

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Inge's avatar

Hi Sophie!

I've got a question. I have a bit of SMBC left, ratio is 1:2:2, wanted to fill it up with mascarpone for a lighter/fresher topping with strawberries. When looking at the SMBC with cream cheese recipe, can I replace the cream cheese with mascarpone? Add some extra butter first?

In a different deep dive I read that you can add about 20-25% of thicker liquids, so I thought of that option first.. Hope my question is making sense!

Either way, your cream cheese ganache is my go to recipe, it is amazing and my new favorite topping!

Inge

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

Ok! So, I find that when adding cream cheese/mascarpone to SMBC it works best to either add a little bit, up to 25% of the totally weight or loads and match the weight, like the cream cheese SMBC recipe here. However, if you add the higher amount, you won’t be able to re-whip it so just bear that in mind. You might be better off adding 25% of the total weight m, tasting it and then going from there

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Inge's avatar

Thank you so much! And good to know about the re-whipping.

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Prue's avatar

Hello!

So, what % fat are we talking for the double cream in the whipped ganache? I've got cream that is 35%, do you think that will be enough?

Thank you for the research and beautiful recipes!

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

Yes I’m sure that will be fine because you have the extra fat from the white chocolate and the cream cheese 😊

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Prue's avatar

Gorgeous, silky, creamy! More difficult to spread that a buttercream, but absolutely worth the compromise! 🤩

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

I’m glad you liked it! It is trickier to spread and a bit less stable. Quite often I use vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream for the outside and this for the inside as it fixes the spreading problem, I tend to have a stash of buttercream in my freezer that I just use for the outside of my cakes

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Prue's avatar

Oh my goodness, i just tried the SMBC version and it's blown my mind!! Delicious, super smooth to put onto layer cakes and ok for piping too. I didn't bother with the straight SMBC on the exterior, it didn't need it! Thanks Sophie!!

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

The SMBC one blew my mind as well! I'd tried to make it loads of times before but it didn't work until I added a really high percentage of cream cheese which is tastier anyway!

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Kiran's avatar

Hello Sophie

Do you think I can use the Cream cheese ganache as one of this fillings in a 3 layered cake? I suppose I am asking if it would be stable enough to support stacking 3X 6 inch layer cakes?

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

Yes it will be fine, as long as it reaches stiff peaks when you whip it up 😌

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Kiran's avatar

Thank you Sophie. It worked like a charm. Will post it on my Instagram grid and will tag. Thank you for such a lovely recipe.

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

Amazing!! Can’t wait to see it. So glad you liked it

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maybae's musings's avatar

Wow this is amazing! I've been trying to figure out a non sloopy cream cheese frosting this week and made an ermine buttercream with cream cheese (could do with a bit more flavour tbh). The ganache cream cheese looks like a game changer. Thank you :)

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

The ganache recipe is SO easy! I love it. It’s my go to, cream cheese icing can be such a pain in the bum! I’ve never made it with an ermine base! Quite new to ermine so need to conduct some experiments!

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Nina Rosenblatt's avatar

Do you have a recipe you can share? I was working on one for a while, but never found a sweet spot.

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

The recipe is in this post

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Nina Rosenblatt's avatar

sorry I meant the cream cheese ermine

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

No, I will do an ermine deep dive at some point but I probably won’t bother developing a cream cheese one because I’m happy with the ones in this post and they’re all much faster to make than ermine

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Weigela Wiegand's avatar

Exceptional work 🫶🏻

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

Thank you!

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Jane's avatar

I love cream cheese frosting, it’s my favourite of all the frostings. I love the recipe you shared back in lockdown with the white chocolate in too, I’ve used that one loads 👌🏻

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Sophie Bamford's avatar

I totally forgot about that recipe! Should have re-visited it here, maybe I’ll do a cream cheese part 2 😅

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Jane's avatar

It’s so lovely ❤️

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Claire Bamford's avatar

Update - I made a carrot cake with the whipped cream cheese ganache and put some slices of cake in the freezer - the ganache is still perfect when it comes out of the freezer. I also froze some leftover ganache but haven’t tried using that yet, but will let you know when I do.

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Claire Bamford's avatar

The recipe with white chocolate is genius! I’ve just made a batch and it was so easy and blooming delicious. Am looking forward to whipping it and icing the cake with it tomorrow

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