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Crusting Cream Cheese Buttercream Recipe {Great for Decorating} - crusting buttercream with amazing cream cheese flavor & stiff enough for cake decorating!

A million times over the years, I've been asked for a good Crusting Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting Recipe that would work well for decorating. Well - this is it! If you're a cake decorator, this is the cream cheese buttercream frosting recipe that you've been looking for!

pink cream cheese buttercream frosting piped in roses on a cake

I've been using this recipe since the very beginning of my cake decorating business way back in 2010 and it's never failed me. This frosting holds up for piping. The frosting will crust. And it's delicious!

I pair this frosting with every flavor of cake you can imagine - vanilla cake, wedding cake, red velvet cake, chocolate cake... all of them. And it's perfection! It's not as soft as many cream cheese frosting recipes - it can't be if you're going to pipe it.

Pink Buttercream Roses Sheet Cake with Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

It also might be a little sweeter than you prefer - but it's still nottoosweet in my opinion and the cream cheese is still the star!

Mostly though, it's just delicious and great for decorating! That's what's important, right? 😉

Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting Recipe

You can see from the piped roses on the 50th birthday cake above how well the frosting holds up for piping!

Now let me tell you a bit more about the cake. This sheet cake was huge! I baked 2 layers of 10x14 sheet cake - stacked and filled with the cream cheese buttercream frosting. That's 70 servings of cake!! And it was made for a 50th birthday party!

The cake itself was white almond sour cream cake (aka wedding cake) - which perfectly pairs with this frosting. I used an Ateco #826 tip to pipe the roses.

Since the order was taken somewhat short notice, the banner on top was printed on regular paper. Then I used bamboo skewers to stand it up on the cake. Normally I'd have preferred to do something in gum paste or fondant, but time didn't allow.

Anywho... back to the frosting. The printable recipe for the Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting is below! And if you have any questions, leave me a comment!

Happy Caking!

Description

This cream cheese frosting is perfect for decorating. It holds its shape well and forms a nice crust!

1 cup salted butter (2 sticks), at room temperature
½ cup Crisco* shortening (just under 4 oz. on a kitchen scale)
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
3 lbs powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon of vanilla extract
2-4 Tablespoons of milk (add to get consistency to pipe or spread)

First, cream the butter and Crisco in a mixing bowl. Mix on low speed for a couple of minutes until smooth and creamy. Add in the vanilla and cream cheese and mix again until very smooth. Gradually add the powdered sugar until it's all combined. It will be very stiff! Then begin adding milk until you reach the desired consistency for decorating (2-3 tablespoons works well for me!)
*I am generally satisfied using generic ingredients, but I've found that Crisco shortening has a much better texture and seems to make smoother, yummier icing than when I make it with generic...just my opinion, if anyone is interested =)
This recipe yields about 4 ½ cups of frosting (~4 lbs when weighed). Yes, it's sweet. Yes, it's a lot of powdered sugar. But I've made this recipe more times than I can count, so I know it does work!

Category: Dessert

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Pink Crusting Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting piped in rosettes

Rose Atwater is the founder and cake decorator behind Rose Bakes. She is baker, cake decorator, author, wife to Richy and homeschooling mommy to 6 wonderful kiddos! Her work has been featured in American Cake Decorating Magazine, Cakes Decor, Pretty Witty Cakes Magazine, Huffington Post and Cake Geek Magazine.