Cream cheese frostings can be finicky, creating runny or drippy icings that are hard to work with. My recipe is super thick and non-runny, with a creamy and stable consistency with a classic American buttercream sweetness. It’s also one of my site's easiest cream cheese frostings and has an amazing tangy, intense cream cheese flavor.

Welcome to my Cream Cheese American Buttercream guide! We'll cover texture, aeration, and ingredient chemistry and how this frosting differs from others on my site. You’ll see the exact process to understand and customize your perfect buttercream.

What is Cream Cheese American Buttercream?

I’ve categorized all my frostings in a large tree. By grouping similar types together, we can easily learn the mechanics of how frostings work within a specific group, what makes them unique (or not ideal for your dessert), and how to easily navigate between groups based on what you need.

Cream Cheese American Buttercream belongs to the Simple Buttercream family, with Classic American Buttercream as its parent recipe.  

As the name suggests, Simple Buttercreams are made using relatively uncomplicated methods. They belong to the Sols/Suspension sub-category, which is a broader category of frostings and icings made using these mix-and-go methods.

Generally, all Simple Buttercreams are:

• great for beginner bakers;
• buttercreams that can form a hardened outer layer of sugar (“crusting” buttercreams);
• texturally heavy due to the high ratio of undissolved sugar;
• naturally very stable to pressure and intense piping jobs; and
• made relatively quickly and easily, i.e., no emulsification steps required.

So, what sets Classic American Buttercream apart from other Frostings?  

Let’s get into the specifics of this buttercream:

What is the flavor and texture of Cream Cheese American Buttercream?

Cream Cheese American Buttercream has a very sweet cream cheese flavor with a moderately high butterfat and high sugar content. Cream cheese contains lactic acid, a byproduct of fermented dairy. This means that it is naturally acidic, or has a slightly sour taste, and adding it to an American Buttercream helps balance the sweetness. 

The texture of this cream cheese frosting is creamy, thick, and dense. There is little aeration during the preparation of ingredients, and that combined with the high ratio of butter and sugar creates a super-dense frosting. 

What is the stability of Cream Cheese American Buttercream?

The stability of this cream cheese frosting is what makes this recipe a standout amongst others; it has a creamy thick sturdy texture that smooths quite nicely on the outside of cakes (see picture above) and perfect for piping beautiful swirls on top of cupcakes.

In general, cream cheese is a pretty finicky ingredient to work with in frostings. With American-style buttercreams, which we are making here, we rely primarily on butterfat for stability. Solid sugar does help too by adding bulk, but for the most part, it’s butterfat. 

To make a frosting that tastes of cream cheese, the recipe typically has to include more cream cheese than butter. Although it looks solid like butter, cream cheese does not have the same stability as butter and therefore we cannot treat it similarly in frostings. 

Butter is around 80% milkfat and 18% water, whereas cream cheese is about 36% milkfat and 50% water. 

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Why are most cream cheese frostings runny?

Most issues I see in cream cheese frostings don’t have to do with any particular ingredients but rather the methods in which they are combined. 

Cream cheese-flavored American buttercreams typically start off by creaming together butter and room-temperature cream cheese first, then adding powdered sugar. This sometimes works, but in my experience, mixing in this way is not a reliable method to create a pipeable and stable cream cheese frosting. 

Cream cheese-flavored American buttercreams typically start off by creaming together butter and room-temperature cream cheese first (a), then adding powdered sugar (b). 

This sometimes works, but in my experience, mixing in this way is not a reliable method to create a pipeable and stable cream cheese frosting. The initial piping work is ok, but definitely not something that would hold up on the side of a cake (c). As the frosting sits at room temperature, the piping work deflates even further; you can see the lack of structure on the piping on the left side of my plate (d). That’s definitely not something I’d trust to hold up cake layers or even stick to the side of a frosted cake reliably.

Adding more powdered sugar is a workaround for this issue, but that sometimes takes the sugar levels of this frosting up to upwards of 60%, which is almost unbearably sweet, even for an American Buttercream. 

My recipe tackles the problems presented with this conventional method. 

1. Over-mixing cream cheese can make it loose. 

The stabilizers within cream cheese are thixotropic, meaning that they thin out the more aggressively they’re mixed. 

SOLUTION: Add the cream cheese at the end and only mix as needed.

2. Mixing cream cheese and sugar directly causes the water in the cream cheese to leak. 

Sugar (particularly sucrose) is very hygroscopic, meaning it has a very strong attraction to adjacent water molecules and will pull them towards themselves. There is water in the cream cheese (around 50%) that gets mixed with the sugar to form a sugar syrup, which destabilizes the frosting, giving it a runny or loose consistency that can be difficult to work with. 

SOLUTION: Add the sugar to the butter first to prevent it from accessing the cream cheese, which is added last.

3. Using room temperature ingredients causes the fats to oversoften, yielding a softer buttercream that is difficult to use. 

Milkfats in both the butter and cream cheese soften and lose structure and rigidity as they warm up. Most cream cheese frostings, including mine, use a higher ratio of fat coming from the cream cheese, which is a less temperature stable than the fat coming from the butter. (Butter contains crystalized fat, which is more stable.) Milkfats from cream cheese melt much more easily, therefore I’ve found it’s best to mix all the ingredients while they are cold. Once you’ve mixed everything together, the stabilizers from the cream cheese can help out a bit and you’ll have a nice and stable frosting once everything reaches room temperature.

SOLUTION: Start with butter and cream cheese directly from the fridge. 

What ingredients will you need to make Cream Cheese American Buttercream?

‍Cream Cheese is a soft, unripened cheese that is made using lactic acid cultures to form a smooth curd. This curd is drained and mixed with stabilizers, usually xanthan gum, locust bean gum, carob bean gum, and carrageenan. These are added to help the cream cheese maintain its solid shape and prevent water leakage.

Ensure that you are using the right style of cream cheese product for my recipe here for the best stability. Cream cheese sold in a tub has less fat (~29% compared to around 36% in the block-style) and more water (59% rather than 50%). Per the FDA, these percentages fall out of the definition of “Cream Cheese” and are labeled “Cream Cheese Spread.” It’s a little tricky because only the word “spread” has been added. However, in baking where things like fat and water content matter, they are not interchangeable and may yield varying results. I will always indicate in my recipes when one can be substituted for another.

Unsalted butter is the primary source of fat and, therefore, stability for this frosting. Unsalted butter contains a tiny bit of water, which will help dissolve the sugar a bit. 

I always use unsalted butter in all my frostings because that allows you to customize the salty taste at the end. Not all salted butter contain the same amount of salt, so using salted kinds of butter run the risk of an overly salty frosting.

Powdered (confectioner’s or icing) sugar provides sweetness and stability for this frosting. This type of sugar is very finely ground into a powder to help it dissolve more easily. When ground so finely, the sugar can clump together, so a small percentage of starch is often added (usually corn or tapioca starch) to powdered sugars, which can also be labeled as an “anti-caking” agent.

Try to use the highest quality sugar can find. I’m finding that the generic brands are usually cut with a slightly higher or coarser type of starch that can also make your finished frosting feel overly sandy. If you can find one labeled “10X” or higher, that’s great. The higher the number, the smaller or finer the sugar crystals will be.

Vanilla extract is a general flavor enhancer for baked goods, but it is the primary flavoring element for this frosting. I use extract, but if you want to be super fancy, you could use a vanilla bean paste. 

A pinch of table salt enhances the flavor and also balances the overall sweetness of this frosting. Crispy salt bits are not as appealing in frostings (compared to savory applications), so I use fine table salt whenever flavoring frosting allows it to dissolve more easily.