Runny Cream Cheese Frosting? How to Make It Work With Tub Cream Cheese

Why tub cream cheese makes runny frosting

American recipes are written for firm, foil-wrapped blocks of cream cheese. In the UK, cream cheese is mostly sold in soft, spreadable tubs, and Nigella’s site points to that switch in packaging as the reason so many people get runny frosting. Two things make it worse:

• Beating the cheese. Cream cheese gets thinner the more it is beaten. Recipes that start by creaming the cheese work with blocks but can turn tub cheese to soup.
• Warm cheese. Soft cheese straight from a warm kitchen has no firmness left to give.

If you can buy full-fat block cream cheese, use it: our stable cream cheese frosting recipe is written for blocks. The rest of this guide is for when tubs are all you can get.

A method that suits tub cheese

Nigella and Living on Cookies both change the mixing order for soft cheese: the butter and sugar are mixed first, and the cheese goes in last.

1. Use full-fat cheese, straight from the fridge. Keep the cheese cold. Only the butter should be soft.
2. Beat the soft butter and icing sugar (powdered sugar) together first, until fully combined. Living on Cookies adds the sugar a third at a time.
3. Add cornflour now if you are using it, with any flavourings (see below).
4. Add the cold cream cheese last, a little at a time. Nigella adds it in portions of about 3 tablespoons (50 g), mixing only until each one disappears.
5. Stop as soon as it is smooth. Don’t keep beating to make it fluffy.

Fix a batch that is already runny

Adding lots more icing sugar does thicken it, but it makes the frosting very sweet and loses the tang. Cornflour and chilling change the taste much less.

Keep it cold

Bring cupcakes out of the fridge a short while before serving if you prefer the frosting softer.