Ingredient

Cream cheese

Cream cheese is milk and cream cultured, drained and usually stabilised. Almost every problem people have with it — runny frosting, cracked cheesecake, a lumpy mixture — comes down to two variables: how much fat and water is in the tub, and what temperature it was when you beat it.

The tub matters more than the recipe

Cream cheese is sold in two quite different forms and using the wrong one is the most common reason a recipe fails.

Full-fat block cream cheese is firm, dense and relatively low in water. This is what baking recipes assume.

Reduced-fat or spreadable cream cheese — the soft kind sold in tubs for spreading — contains considerably more water and more stabilising gums. It is excellent on a bagel and poor in a cheesecake, because that extra water has to go somewhere: it produces a looser batter, a longer bake, more shrinkage and a greater chance of cracking. In a frosting it simply refuses to firm up.

The rule is short. For anything baked or set, buy full-fat. For spreading, buy whatever you like.

It is also worth knowing that cream cheese varies noticeably by brand in firmness and tang, and a recipe developed around one will behave slightly differently with another.

Frosting, and why temperature decides it

Cream cheese frosting is notoriously prone to going runny, and the cause is almost always heat — either from the room, from the hands, or from over-beating.

The mechanism is straightforward: cream cheese is an emulsion with a soft fat structure, and warming it or working it too hard breaks that structure down. Once the fat has softened past a certain point it cannot hold the sugar and it slumps.

So the technique is essentially about staying cold and doing less. Beat the butter and icing sugar first, until pale and smooth. Then add the cream cheese, cold from the fridge, and beat only until it is just combined — seconds rather than minutes. Every extra minute of beating makes it looser.

If it does go soft, chill it for half an hour and it will usually firm up enough to use. Adding more icing sugar makes it sweeter without making it much more stable, which is the trap.

Cheesecake, and the cracking question

Cracks are a structural failure, and there are four contributing causes.

• Over-beating. Beating air into a cheesecake batter gives it bubbles that expand in the oven and collapse on cooling, tearing the surface. Beat on a low speed, only until smooth, and scrape the bowl rather than whipping harder.
• Too much heat. A cheesecake is a baked custard and it wants a gentle, even temperature. Too hot and the edges set and shrink while the middle is still liquid.
• Sudden cooling. Taking it straight from a hot oven into a cool kitchen contracts the surface faster than the inside. Turn the oven off and let it cool in there with the door ajar.
• Sticking to the tin. As the cheesecake shrinks, a surface stuck to the sides is pulled apart. Grease the tin properly, and run a knife round the edge as soon as it comes out.
• A water bath solves most of it, by keeping the temperature gentle and even and the atmosphere humid.
• And a cracked cheesecake tastes exactly the same. Soured cream topping, fruit or a dusting of cocoa covers it entirely.

Cream cheese and its relatives

Cream cheese

Milk and cream, cultured, drained, usually stabilised. Tangy, dense, spreadable. Around 20–35% fat depending on type.

Mascarpone

Cream set with acid, no culture. Much richer, much milder, softer — see mascarpone.

Ricotta

Whey cheese. Light, grainy, mild. Not a substitute where density matters.

Quark

Cultured and drained, very low fat, tangy. A good lighter substitute in baking, though it will not give the same richness.

Curd cheese

Similar to quark. Traditional in British cheesecakes and lighter than the American style.

Labneh

Strained yoghurt. Tangier and thinner. Excellent savoury, not a baking substitute.

Common questions