My mum rarely made cakes, and when she did, they were whip cream based. Strawberry shortcake. Berry trifle. Chocolate mousse cake. Ice cream cake. Karen liked whip cream, so she made and bought what she liked. She didn’t like thick sweet icing, so she didn’t use it. And molded in her tastes, I also didn’t like that kind of icing.

Since I didn’t go to pastry school, I lacked the skill to make quality buttercreams like I do today.  I didn’t even know the difference between American icing versus Swiss or Italian meringue buttercreams, ermine frosting, or what you got out of the Betty Crocker tub. I never ventured to make cakes or cupcakes, since I always preferred making cookies, bars or loaves. Cakes were for special occasions, not Friday night baking. If anything, I made a bundt cake and threw some glaze on. That was the extent of cake in my arsenal prior to Dolled Up Desserts.

I remember the day I tried cream cheese icing. My aunt brought a Dufflet carrot cake to the annual Poletto family Christmas party. I probably was 10 or 12? 

My perspective on icing was forever changed. 

Thick. Rich. Creamy. Tangy. I have never tasted anything so delicious in my entire short life. To the point where I cut the icing off the sides of the rest of the cake and just ate the icing for 2-3 slices of cake. 

Dufflet’s cream cheese icing is still one of my favourite cream cheese icings to this day. 

I actually never made real, dairy filled, cream cheese buttercream until my 28th birthday in 2022. It was hard enough having food restrictions and trying to bake the simplest cookie, why would I even venture making icing or cake when I had never done it prior?

The first icing I ever made (like, ever made in my life) was vegan cream cheese icing for Dolled Up Desserts.  I knew cake and cupcakes were something I would have to make now owning a bakery, so I decided to go with what I liked. A very Karen move. 

Our first cream cheese icing was tasty at the time, but it paled in comparison to the cream cheese icing I fell in love with as a kid. I used Earth Balance buttery sticks, Daiya plain cream cheese, and icing sugar. It was thick, rich, but it tasted a little like playdoh masked by sugar and lacked that distinct tang only dairy could offer. It also didn’t hold up well in the heat, and would slowly ooze into the cupcake as a melty goop when placed out at events. 

I personally despise vegan cream cheese. Hot take: it’s shit compared to the real stuff. The texture is weird and it tastes like plastic. There is nothing redeeming about it, and thus I never ate it. But, as a new bakery owner, I needed an icing, and straight earth balance with icing sugar wasn’t going to cut it since earth balance also had a detestable vegan taste and melted even faster. At least the cream cheese icing had a bit more structure (LOL).

The cream cheese icing was passable. I didn’t know how to improve it, so I stuck with it until Daiya stopped making its cream cheese a few months into owning the bakery. My supplier, UNFI, stopped carrying it and only carried Tofutti. If you thought Daiya was bad, in my opinion, Tofutti was even WORSE. At that point, I swore off making cupcakes all together.

Unfortunately, I still got requests, and as a small business owner desperate for any cash available, I had to go back to the drawing board and make a palatable cream cheese icing. 

The hydrogenation made it solid at 30+ Celsius temperatures. Its taste was, well, not great, but with enough vanilla extract, sugar, and a couple other ingredients used in my favourite pastry chef’s cream cheese icing, (Christina Tosi), I was able to whip up a cream cheese buttercream that I actually liked. It even had a fake tang, thanks to citric acid! 

However, challenges were on the horizon for me and my cream cheese recipe. In 2019, the Canadian government passed a law that banned hydrogenated oils in food. My little blue tubs of Tofuffi were suddenly illegal to sell. In a scramble, I contacted Tofutti directly and bought out what they had left in their canadian warehouse. I sent my mum to every local grocer and health food store in the Greater Toronto Area and bought their stock. It was a sad day when we used the last tub of the blue tofutti. The yellow packaged, non hydrogenated stuff was just not the same. It melted much faster and tasted worse (somehow) than the original. However, once we finally started using shortening in the bakery (I will talk about my love-hate relationship with shortening and why I resisted using it another time), the stability issue was solved.

In the bakery, we had to stop adding the tang to the icing. People complained the icing tasted too sour. Personally, I thought my customers were all out to lunch, but as a small business owner desperate for any cash available, I regretfully removed the tang. For the recipe, I have included it as an optional add in.

Slathered on our popular red velvet cake, carrot cake, and piped on our GINORMOUS cinnamon rolls, it was a customer favourite. However, it was never MY favourite. Too much of it in one bite made me stop eating the baked good. So whenever we used it, I always tried to find a way to pair it with something else to help balance or mask the “vegan” flavour I didn’t like. For carrot cake, we had caramel ganache between the layers instead of icing and flaked coconut on the iced outside for texture. For red velvet cake, we filled layers with chocolate ganache and crushed oreos. Although our cinnamon rolls were loaded with icing, I scraped off the icing from the buns I ate. 

I am not trying to dissuade you from making this icing. Relative to the other dairy free vegan icings out there, this recipe slaps HARD. It’s:

• easy to make, relative to our buttercream;
• has a great shelf life in the fridge (2 months!);
• super easy to pipe and smooth out on cakes;
• not too sweet (about ¼ less sweet than many recipes);
• is stable at warmer temperatures; and 
• when put on something cake like, it’s a welcome addition. 

I just preferred our buttercream. 

This cream cheese icing recipe will be used in the next capsule recipe for our carrot cupcake. This recipe deserved its own page versus being thrown in with the cakes as an afterthought. It has legacy. Frankly, it was integral to building out Dolled Up Desserts, and pushing me to be a better pastry chef.

Until next time,

Katarina