Cream Cheese, Not Just For Bagels!

   Let's continue our discussion of icings with a perennial fan favorite, that's right, we're going to talk

This doesn't even have cream cheese in it!

about CREAM CHEESE ICING! It's SO delicious! Doesn't it just sound delightful? Don't you just want to scoop it up with a spoon and eat it on a chocolate chip cookie? I do, I really really do. Now, you can buy it in a can from the supermarket, but it's just not going to be the same as the really real good stuff. I strongly recommend making it yourself, it's pretty easy to make and it will actually have cream cheese! Like everything, though, it does have its drawbacks. It's definitely more challenging to work with than buttercream icing, and it is a lot pickier when it comes to what temperatures it likes.

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Icing!

    

   Cream Cheese Icing is a delicious alternative to buttercream. Some people can find buttercream to be a little too, well, buttery (not me, but some people do). Cream cheese icing has a pleasantly grainy quality to it (sounds weird, I know) and it develops a nice kind of crust that some people like on their icings. It's also sweeter than our buttercream, so for people who really love their desserts sweet, cream cheese icing is a great option. 

 
  Do you love red velvet cake? You actually love cream cheese icing. Do you love carrot cake? You probably ALSO secretly love cream cheese icing. There are quite a few cakes that are almost always iced with cream cheese icing because it really complements the cake. While buttercream is great, I can't really think of that many cakes that must be made with buttercream icing to be right. It has a real nostalgia quality that just can't be matched.

You can color your cream cheese icing
like I did on these pumpkin cupcakes.

    If you've never had cream cheese icing, it is a lot like the american style buttercream we talked about in an earlier post. It's pretty simple to make. For ours we beat together a pound of room temperature cream cheese with 12 oz of room temperature butter. Then we add in 28.8 oz of sifted confectioner's sugar. Once it's all in, we add 1/3 fl. oz of vanilla (2 teaspoons) and let the kitchenaid beat the crap out of it until it is stiff and white. So, making it is pretty darn easy. However, any cake decorator can tell you that sometimes it just doesn't want to cooperate when you start to ice your cake.

These Carrot cupcakes want to warn you:
Beware the dark side of cream cheese icing!

    The dark side of cream cheese icing is that you have to get the consistency just right when icing the cake, or it can be really frustrating. It has a tendency to be gooey, sticky, soft and stiff (in a bad way) all at the same time. So what can happen is that your beautiful sharp corners that you worked so hard to achieve at the top of your cake will start to droop and sag, making them a rounded mess. You're sides start to slope so that your icing is thicker at the base than the top! You're icing can be sticky and stiff in a way that simply pulls crumbs off the cake and into the icing. Worst of all, if you room is too warm, it can be a real struggle to stop the icing from basically melting all over your cake! But fear not, it just takes some practice and some know-how to get it to be your friend. I've worked with it for about 8 years now and can get it to be as pretty as my buttercream cakes.

    Here are my tips for icing a cake with cream cheese icing if you want to make your life a little easier and your cake a little nicer:

   DO work with it cold, the colder it is, the stiffer it will be. 

   DON'T try to work with it in a hot kitchen or when the icing is warm. The warmer it is, the meltier, gooier and messier it will be. This makes it really hard to get clean edges and corners.

   DO make sure the cake you are icing is nice and chilled, frozen is ideal. 

   DON'T get inpatient and try to ice your cake while it is still warm. You're just asking for crumbs, broken layers and heartache.

   DO beat the crap out of your icing with a kitchenaid. Beat it until it is quite white and stiff. This could take 5-10 minutes. It will start to get more matte looking, as well. 

   DON'T try to ice it with cream cheese icing that is yellowish, grainy, wet-looking, or sticky. Put that stuff on the mixer and let it go until it's white and stiff!

   DO plan to do a crumb coat, then freeze it solid before you apply your finish coat. This will give you the prettiest looking cake and keep crumbs out of the way. It will make your life much easier.

   DON'T try to use this icing if you cake is going to sit out in the sun or heat. It's just not going to stay nice, it will sag, droop and melt. Keep it in the AC, please. 

   DON'T try to ice a tiered cake with cream cheese icing. I mean, you can try, but I wouldn't recommend it (at least not the real stuff, I can't account for people who use cream cheese icing full or stabilizers, maybe theirs works on a 6 tiered wedding cake). The reason I don't use it is that it's just a softer icing that never really sets up with the same strength as buttercream or fondant. Your cake could start to smoosh under it's own weight. Cream cheese icing is much better suited to single tiers and cupcakes. 

   DO use cream cheese icing on your smaller cakes. It's just delicious and it works with so many different flavor combinations. It is a sweet icing, but it also has that great savory element from the cream cheese. I also highly recommend adding a little cinnamon and putting it on pumpkin pound cake!

   DON'T plan to use this for your piped decorations. Try buttercream instead, it will set up much better and be a more reliable piping consistency. 

   DON'T try to cover a cream cheese cake with fondant. Your edges won't look nice, use buttercream instead. 

   DO re-whip your cream cheese icing periodically, especially if you've had it in the fridge for more than an hour or two. 

DO add cinnamon and make
pumpkin cupcakes with Cinnamon
Cream Cheese icing!

     Those are some of the DO's and DON'Ts that I've learned over the years. Remember that every recipe is different, so feel free to experiment. You may have some tricks of your own for taming the beast. If it's still proving difficult, take heart, it can happen to all of us. For example, two weeks ago I drove some red velvet cake layers and a batch of cream cheese icing up to New Hampshire for my Nai Nai's 90th birthday. My first mistake was trying to work in a different kitchen, this is always a bad decision. Next, I really wanted to make this a strawberry short cake variation, so my filling was very loose, probably not the best plan for a cake getting cream cheese icing. I wasn't too worried though, until I put my mom's hand mixer into the icing and PROMPTLY KILLED THE MOTOR! This meant I wasn't going to be able to beat the icing to the proper consistency discussed above. This made icing the cake much much more challenging. After about 30 minutes in icing hell, and 2 crumb coats and some time in the freezer, I finally managed to get that icing to behave and was able to make a pretty looking cake for my Nai Nai. The moral of the story? Don't give up. When it doubt, let the cake chill and don't lose hope! The cake looked beautiful and tasted delicious, and in the end, that's what matters.

It all worked out in the end with this
red velvet/strawberry shortcake with cream cheese icing.