Cream Cheese Frosting is fantastic. Sweet with a tang! Carrot cake isn't carrot cake without cream cheese frosting :)

I like to add vanilla bean seeds, tastes great and I love seeing the minute black specks. There are many variations you can try, add ¼ cup of cocoa or 1-2 Tbsp instant coffee which makes it great on chocolate cake. You can also add lemon or orange zest for a different flavour.

Ingredients:

450g Cream Cheese (2 x 8oz packets), chilled

115g Unsalted butter, room temp

2- 2½ cups Icing Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

or

½ tsp Vanilla Extract & seeds from 1 vanilla pod

Method:

• Beat the butter until smooth and creamy, add the cream cheese and blend together until smooth.
• With mixer on low speed add icing sugar, little bit at a time, and vanilla.
• Increase the speed of mixer and beat until well mixed.

Makes enough to cover and fill a 3 layer 8-inch cake.

Most recipes I've found say to use room temperature cream cheese, but every time I've done that, my icing comes out far too soft (resulting in cake layers sliding off and even once destroying the top 2 layers of a carrot cake :( ) and even chilling it doesn't seem to help (well, I don't have the time to chill it overnight before frosting) so I use cream cheese straight out the fridge (but butter MUST be room temp!) and have had great success doing it that way.

Can be refrigerated, covered, until ready to use. Bring to room temperature and beat until smooth before using.