Cream Cheese Frosting

This frosting recipe is from The Hummingbird Bakery book called ‘Cake Days’, it’s also been shared numerous times in magazines. They use it for their Red Velvet Cupcakes and it’s so good. I’ll be honest making Red Velvet Cupcakes, is a bit of a chore – so many bowls and ingredients, but some people really do love them! I’m a fan.

Anyway, back to the frosting….

This cream cheese frosting also works well on carrot cake in any form – cake, cupcakes or traybake. I made it recently for a carrot cake traybake (link below) and it was gobbled up. I was unsure if my kids would like it, so left 1/3 cake plain, un-iced. The next day, I put the remaining frosting on the un-iced bit, they liked it, a lot.

I halve the ingredients from the cookery book and it’s plenty for the traybake or to ice cupcakes but feel free to double the amount below if you want ooodles.

Ingredients:

50 g unsalted butter (softened)
300 g icing sugar (sifted)
125 g full fat cream cheese (supermarket brands are fine)

Method:

Using the electric whisk or freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment (if you have one), and mixing on a low speed, beat the butter and icing sugar together until no large lumps of butter remain and the mixture is sandy in texture.
Add the cream cheese and mix together slowly until everything is incorporated, then increase the speed to medium and beat the frosting until it is soft and fluffy.
Spread or pipe onto cooled cake or cupcakes.

Cakemum tips/observations:

The best tip, which I can pass on, is to make sure the butter is very soft. If it’s not really soft you can find little lumps in the finished icing. While it doesn’t ruin the taste, it doesn’t look as nice as super smooth icing. I was a bit slap dash when I made it the other day, and when I was spreading it on the cake, remembered the importance of softened butter. It had been a while since I made it, so had forgotten my own tip!
I mentioned in my carrot cake post, that I think cream cheese frosting should be stored in the fridge. Normally all my cakes can be stored at room temperature, but I recommend you store any bake with cream cheese frosting on it, in the fridge. Just remove it half an hour before eating, to allow to come to room temp.
The recipe for the carrot cake traybake is here Carrot Cake Traybake

Happy Baking

De (aka thecakemum)

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