No Butter Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

Name: No Butter Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 4 Cups
Ingredients: 450 grams Cream cheese; 500 grams Powdered sugar; 2 tbsp Whipping cream; 2 tbsp Cornstarch; 1/2 tsp Lemon juice; 2 tbsp Vanilla

June 7, 2012 By Veena Azmanov 33 Comments

NO Butter Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

This no butter cream cheese frosting is light, fluffy and melts in the mouth just like whipped cream. A simple, easy and effortless recipe that gets done in less than 10 minutes. Perfect for cupcakes or your favorite carrot cake recipe.

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Have you ever wanted to make a cream cheese frosting with just cream cheese? NO butter?

The best part it’s rich, delicious, creamy and melts in the mouth. While I should not favor one of my recipes over another, I will say that this is my favorite cream cheese frosting. Don’t get me wrong both my recipes are good and I love them both. And yet this one – I cannot resist eating it with a spoon. The truth is I love cheese and I can eat cheese by the block.

While both recipes are the BEST, there are advantages and disadvantages to both

This no butter cream cheese frosting is really light and has a whipped cream kinda consistency. Because there is no butter. You can pipe swirls and also use it to frost a cake. And yet, it’s a soft icing so there are limitations to what you can do with this. If I make cream cheese frosting for the family – this is it. Light and fluffy just like whipped cream.

On the other hand, my classic cream cheese frosting has butter which adds stability. Also, butter can be whipped to make a more light and fluffy buttercream kinda frosting. So you can use it in a cake covered with fondant too. It does make some nice firm cream cheese swirls on cupcakes. In addition, you can pipe borders around a cake. For my business, the classic is usually my go-to recipe. Customers love it and I love working with it.

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Let’s talk ingredients and substitutes for this recipe (Save/Pin)

Cream Cheese – No low fat – please use full-fat cream cheese such as Philadelphia or Mascarpone. There is no butter in this recipe so a cream cheese fat is all the stability you get in this recipe. Also, always use cream cheese at room temperature.
Lemon – Just a tiny amount to cut the sugar. And it makes a huge difference. It does not affect the taste. So if you want the lemon flavor you will need to add more.
Salt – Sounds like a lot but it does help cut the sugar a lot!!
Powdered sugar – Use good powdered sugar made from cane sugar, not beet sugar. And you will never have a grainy buttercream or frosting recipe.

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Recipe – NO Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Useful Tips and Tools

If you bake often, it would be a good idea to invest in a cake mixer. Because often we try to mix by hand and then we are too tired to give it enough creaming or mixing. So if you are making this buttercream go head and remove that K-Mix or KitchenAid from your kitchen cabinet. You don’t have to buy an expensive stand mixer, a simple hand mixer works great too.
For buttercream mixing always use a paddle attachment so you do not incorporate too much air into the buttercream. Some recipes, however, such as meringue buttercreams, require the use of the whisk attachments.
Having said that, a simple Bowl, whisk and Spatula with a little extra elbow grease will do too.
Personally, I believe in measuring ingredients by weight, which makes my kitchen scale one of the most valuable items when baking. The same goes for mymeasuring cups and measuring spoons. It’s always a good idea to have these handy and use them when baking rather than trying to guess measurements.
After the buttercream is prepared always keep it sealed well in the fridge. This will prevent any odor from the other foods to attach itself to the buttercream. Therefore, I place my buttercream in a stainless steel storage (we try to avoid using plastic in our home). And I also cover the top surface of the buttercream with cling wrap.

Ingredients – for 12 cupcakes or fill and frost a 6-inch round cake

Cream cheese – 450 grams (16 oz or 12 cup)
Powdered sugar – 500 grams (4 cups)
Whipping cream – 2 tbsp
Corn starch – 2 tbsp
Lemon juice – 1/2 tsp
Vanilla – 2 tbsp

Method

Add room temperature cream cheese, lemon juice, corn starch and whipping cream in a mixer bowl.
Whip on medium speed for about 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
Add powdered sugar one cup at a time until you’ve used 2 cups of the powdered sugar.
Lastly, add the vanilla.
Continue to mix on medium high for more 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
Check consistency – if too soft add a little more powder sugar. If necessary add a tbsp or more of whipping cream to lighten it up.
The more you whip, the lighter this frosting becomes. Just like whipped cream frosting.

Flavors

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting – Replace 2 tbsp powdered sugar with cocoa powder – mix together before you add into the mixer.
Lemon Juice – Replace the fresh cream with 1 tbsp of lemon juice – more if you like a tart buttercream.
Peppermint – Replace 1 tsp of vanilla in the recipe with 1 tsp peppermint extract to the above frosting.
Maple – Replace the cream in this recipe with Maple syrup – the syrup will lighten the frosting so you may not be able to pipe firm swirls but it will still be absolutely delicious.
Caramel – Omit the fresh cream in the recipe – Add 1/4 cup thick caramel sauce (see my homemade caramel sauce recipe here) – and add the caramel sauce at the last stage and you have whipped the cream cheese frosting.
The consistency will be softer so you won’t be able to pipe firm swirls.
Since caramel is added sugar the resulting frosting is rather sweet. You can add salt flakes to cut some of that and get a salted caramel effect.
Personally, I prefer to make the classic cream cheese frosting recipe and then drizzle the caramel over the finished cupcake or cake as an added effect which is usually more appreciated than adding caramel into the frosting.

Don’t forget to save this recipe on Pinterest for later.
You can find a collection of my tutorials and recipes here on Pinterest.

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