How to Make Thick Cream Cheese Frosting for Cakes and Piping with Less Sugar

Most cream cheese frostings end up too soft and runny, unstable, or too sweet from an excess of powdered sugar added to thicken them enough for decorated layer cakes. Fear not: with a change in technique and an easy recipe, you can make thick cream cheese frosting to decorate cakes and with a lot less sugar!

Cream cheese frosting is notoriously unstable. The water in the cheese tends to separate out, creating a runny, loose frosting. Most people choose to add more powdered sugar to remedy the situation, but I've found a new way to mix the ingredients that yields a thick cream cheese frosting with half as much powdered sugar as the classic recipe. Another option is to make this thick cream cheese frosting without powdered sugar, sweetened with white chocolate instead of icing sugar.

Jump to:

• The Science Of Cream Cheese Frosting
• The Trick To Thick Cream Cheese Frosting
• Ingredients To Make Thick Cream Cheese Frosting
• Ratios For Stable Frosting
• Substitutions And Variations
• Technique To Make Stable Cream Cheese Frosting For Cake Decorating
• Cream Cheese Frosting FAQs
• Dessert Recipes With Cream Cheese Frosting
• 📖 Recipe

The Science Of Cream Cheese Frosting

Typical recipes for cream cheese frosting have you cream the butter and the cream cheese together, then add A TON of icing sugar. Cream cheese frosting recipes call for so much powdered sugar because, without it, the frosting tends to be runny, unstable, weepy, and soupy.

Why It's So Unstable

To understand why cream cheese frosting is unstable, you need to think about two things:

1. Water content: A block of cream cheese contains a lot more water than the same weight of butter. Remember that most grocery store butters have roughly 80% fat, while cream cheese is half that, around 40% fat. What remains in both cases is mostly water, so cream cheese contains more moisture than butter.
2. Hygroscopicity: Icing sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it pulls water from the environment. When cream cheese is creamed with butter, and then the icing sugar is added, the icing sugar draws out the moisture from the butter and the cheese. Butter has very little moisture to draw out, so you can make a thick, pipeable frosting with butter and icing sugar without much worry. But since cream cheese contributes double the moisture, when the icing sugar draws out that moisture, you end up with a soupy, runny, unstable cream cheese frosting.

You need to add a lot of powdered sugar to classic cream cheese frosting because without it, the frosting is too soft to work with. Otherwise, the frosting doesn't hold its shape when piped, and it's quite unstable. Bakers tend to overload the frosting with powdered sugar to stiffen the frosting. This is the main reason most cream cheese frosting recipes call for a large amount of icing sugar. This leads to a cloyingly sweet cream cheese frosting that doesn't taste very good.

The Trick To Thick Cream Cheese Frosting

Other recipes may rely on excess amounts of icing sugar, mascarpone, or even gelatin or cornstarch to stabilize cream cheese frosting. This version is purely a change in technique so you get the best cream cheese flavour without adding anything unusual.

If you want to avoid adding too much icing sugar to cream cheese frosting to make it lower in sugar while still creating a thicker texture for frosting a cake or decorating cupcakes, change the order in which you mix your ingredients! Here's what I mean:

• Step 1: Cream the butter with the icing sugar first, thereby coating all the little sugar molecules with fat
• Step 2: Once the butter and icing sugar are well mixed, add in the cream cheese. The sugar is coated with fat, making it more difficult to draw moisture out of the cream cheese. The cream cheese remains intact, and no water leaches out.

By following this mixing order, you can make a frosting with significantly less sugar. In fact, you end up with a frosting that tastes a lot like cheesecake, tangy and not overly sweet!

Ingredients To Make Thick Cream Cheese Frosting

You only need four ingredients to make thick cream cheese frosting:

• cream cheese: I prefer to make this frosting with blocks of full-fat Philadelphia brand cream cheese. Do not use low-fat cream cheese, which has more water and will make the frosting unstable
• butter: I bake with unsalted butter, but salted or demi-salted will work here
• icing sugar: use powdered (icing) sugar in this frosting to achieve a smooth, creamy texture. Granulated sugar will lead to a more gritty texture.
• flavourings: pure vanilla extract or almond extract work great in this recipe. You can also opt for vanilla bean paste, which will give the frosting a subtle speckled appearance.

Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.

Ratios For Stable Frosting

After many tests, I have concluded that the best ratio of butter:cream cheese:icing sugar for stable cream cheese frosting is 85-90 grams butter to 109 grams icing sugar to 250 grams cream cheese (1 block).

Substitutions And Variations

• Use blocks of cream cheese, not the kind in tubs: The type of cream cheese you buy affects this recipe. Cream cheese sold in the tub is formulated to be spreadable, and with that softer consistency, it may have a higher water content! Cream cheese sold in the tub has slightly less fat and more water than cream cheese sold in blocks, which is much firmer. Do not use any sort of low-fat cream cheese.
• Orange/lemon flavour: to add citrus flavour, use the zest, not the juice! Alternatively, you can add orange or lemon extract, or orange or lemon oil,
• Chocolate flavour: I have not tested a chocolate version of this recipe, but I would likely use Dutch-processed cocoa powder to maintain the creamy texture. Melted chocolate hardens as it cools, and may cause the frosting to thicken excessively, altering the texture.
• Colour: You can colour it with gel food colouring for decorating, and reader Michelle suggested trying a powder food colouring, which is brilliant.
• Brown butter: Try browning the butter, then cooling it to room temperature before using it to give the frosting a nutty flavour.
• Cinnamon: If you'd like to flavour this cream cheese frosting with cinnamon, start with 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, then taste and adjust as needed. I suspect you might even need 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Any substitutions and variations you make need to be tested. Do a trial run on a small batch to work out the kinks before making frosting for a cake, or you may run into problems.

Technique To Make Stable Cream Cheese Frosting For Cake Decorating

I prefer to make it in a stand mixer with a paddle, but you could also use a handheld electric mixer:

Step 1: Combine the icing sugar and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (image 10). Cream the two ingredients together really well until the mixture is smooth with no lumps (image 11).

Step 2: Add the cream cheese to the mixer bowl (image 12) and beat it in until smooth, creamy and fluffy (image 13).

If you tried this recipe for thick cream cheese frosting (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!

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