Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting

Hi there home-bakers, I hope you are all happy and well 🙂 Today I’d like to share this cream cheese frosting (icing) recipe with you, it’s soft, light and fluffy. Because it’s not a firmer cream cheese icing it’s best for filling and icing lighter cakes, muffins or cupcakes. I use it to decorate my carrot cakes and muffins, spreading it on with a spatula or piping it on with my large round piping nozzle. I quite like that ‘rustic’, ‘home-made’ look.

This frosting is delicious on Carrot Cakes, loaves, muffins and cupcakes. If you are icing anything containing bananas, lemon, blueberries or raspberries I would add the lemon juice in the ingredient list. I prefer to use vanilla essence if I were icing anything that’s chocolate or vanilla flavoured and of course red-velvet cakes and cupcakes. Those are just my preferences, everyone has different tastes and I’m sure it will taste fantastic whatever you put it with. There are also lots of different flavours you can add to this frosting like baileys, peanut butter, orange, cinnamon, honey, almond…..the list goes on and on. I will add some of them here as I use them in the future 🙂

 

INGREDIENTS

85 grams butter (at room temperature)
85 grams ‘traditional’ cream cheese (at room temperature)
2 cups icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence or 1 tablespoon lemon juice (from 1/2 a medium-sized lemon)

 

Makes 2 1/2 cups and is enough to thickly ice the top of a 23 cm round cake.

 

WALKTHROUGH

With your electric beater on a medium speed, cream the butter and cream cheese together until creamy, for around three minutes.

• You can’t do this well unless the butter is at room temperature and you really can’t do it if the butter is melted, the icing won’t be as creamy.

Next add one cup of the icing sugar and continue beating for another three minutes.

Go on and add the last cup of icing sugar and the vanilla essence or lemon juice, whichever one you prefer and…..

…..continue beating on medium for a further three minutes or until creamy, light and fluffy.

There you go, you are ready to ice that delicious looking cake or cupcakes you’ve baked (I want one!)

• When I ice my cakes I put a whole pile on top first and then using a metal spatula, carefully spread it around to the edges and then when the top is covered (at least 1/2 cm thick) I then carefully remove any excess.  If you put a small amount on first and scrap it over the top of your cake, crumbs will come off into your icing and it will look really messy (done that lots!)

Storage – Once iced, your baking will be best kept in the fridge (this frosting does not hold up well in heat). Any extra frosting should be keep covered and refrigerated and will keep up to one week. When I do use any spare that’s been in the fridge a few days I beat it again for a few minutes to bring it back to a spreadable consistency.