Cake Decorating Basics - Part 4

This post is a continuation of the previous posts Part III, Part II and Part I. This post concentrates on cream cheese frosting. If you google for the recipe of cream cheese frosting, you probably will get tons of recipes. So, there is nothing special about this post. However, there is a difference in the proportions which makes it perfect for decorating a cake with this. What am I talking about? Let's look at a traditional cream cheese frosting. Shall we?

Traditional cream cheese frosting perfect for spreading:

This uses 1 stick of butter, 1 8 Oz block of cream cheese frosting, 4 cups of confectioner's sugar, 1 - 2 tsp of flavoring. All you have to do is beat room temperature butter and room temperature cream cheese well and slowly add the confectioner's sugar and beat to incorporate all the sugar. Add the flavoring and you are done. Can you pipe with it? Yes, but very hard to do. This tastes great and not sickly sweet but is hard to pipe so that it retains the shape. This is great to make water effect or ripple effect or just pull out style using the back of a spoon on the cake though. I am posting one of the pictures of the cake I made with this recipe that too with fat free cream cheese.

Now, let's come to a cream cheese based frosting that you can pipe and decorate a cake with. I had collected the original recipe from another cake decorating forum and I am posting my version of it.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup solid vegetable shortening
2 8 Oz blocks of cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract (if you don't care about the color, use regular vanilla)
3 1/2  - 4 pounds sifted confectioner's sugar (If you open a new 4 lb bag of confectioner's sugar, you don't have to sift it)
1/2 teaspoon salt (Grind in mortar and pestle or use popcorn salt)

Method:

Beat butter, vegetable shortening, cream cheese, salt very well till creamy. Slowly add confectioner's sugar and keep beating till creamy. Add the flavoring sometime in the process and beat well. This will give you stiff consistency which is perfect for making flowers. If you reduce the powdered sugar to 3 pounds, you'll get the consistency to spread or frost the cake. Between the two consistency is the medium stiff frosting perfect for borders like shell, star, reverse shell etc.

I am posting two of the cakes I have decorated with this frosting.

 

Happy Baking!!

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