Creamcheese, Left Out Overnight?
Decorating By cathie_shinnick Updated 14 Nov 2008 , 11:33pm by emiyeric
I am getting ready to fill a carrot cake and was wondering, if I fill with a cream cheese frosting. Then cover with BC does it have to be put in the fridge? Or should I just use all BC
I have eaten unrefrigerated (up to 5 days) cream cheese icing for, quite literally, 35+ years. I have never had a problem with it. So.....I wouldn't worry about it. The only thing I would caution you about is that it gets softer than buttercream, so if you are making any kind of decorations with it, they might not hold up as well.
Heather
Me, too. I fill and frost my carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting made with lots of powdered sugar. I think the sugar helps preserve the cream cheese.
I do keep the cake refrigerated until a few hours before I want to serve it because I worry about the same thing. But after it is cut I just put in a Tupperware carrier and let it sit out until it is eaten, usually for 2 or three days.
It's usually me who ends up eating most of it and I have never gotten sick. 
HTH
Kim
Thank you all so very much, my client wanted creamcheese, now I can give them what they eant!!!!!!! 
If you feel confident in your product and are certain that unrefrigerated cream cheese icing will not unfavorably impact anyone with a touchy stomach or anyone that is very old and has fragile health and you would be happy if anyone took a little swipe of icing and put a fingerful into a baby's mouth then leave the cake unrefrigerated.
But if you think that you would want to cya if someone came back and questioned your methods in the unlikely event that someone got sick and came to talk to you then play it safe.
Potential liability issues resulting from decisions made on questions like this are why home bakers do not have the option to be legal in many areas. Cream cheese is listed as a potentially hazardous ingredient in Tennessee.
I'm a real buzz kill.
Memhis I think the same way.
I will not eat anything that sits out over night. Scares me that someone will get sick form things sitting out. I know alots of people say that BC is fine sitting out. My way of thinking iif it contains butter, milk, eggs, or cream in it then it needs to be in the fridge. But then again I am really bad because I wont even eat cookies that I made unless its the day I made them.
SO maybe just to be safe keep it in the fridge just so there are no chances someone might get sick.
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade but safe food handling practices are one of the most important lessons I've learned from CC. 
There are b/c cream cheese frostings and then there's whipped cream cheese with a bit of sugar frosting. (There's no one universal recipe that EVERYONE uses!)
For example, my recipe might use 3 oz. of cream cheese and 2 lbs. of powdered sugar, while your recipe uses 24 oz. of cream cheese and only 1-1/2 cups of powdered sugar.....
(So while I'm using MY recipe as a reference point, I'm not considering YOUR recipe which is almost STRAIGHT cream cheese.) 
Whether or not your recipe requires refrigeration depends on YOUR recipe and safe food handling practices and NOT on anecdotal evidence (which won't save you from a lawsuit).
If you're not worried about making yourself or family members ill, that's one issue. 
But the general public, and especially the elderly, young children and anyone with a weakened immune system should only be served food that has been made and stored in accordance with safe food handling practices. 
Previous threads on whether cream cheese frosting requires refrigeration:
(Also has best cream cheese recipes and "Why cream cheese frosting isn't good for decorating".)
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-6139624.html
Safe food handling of unrefrigerated cream cheese:
(Usually required to discard after 2 hours but found sites that said after 4-5 hrs. WITHOUT refrigeration.)
http://tinyurl.com/5zzkpt
http://tinyurl.com/5mzxzk
http://tinyurl.com/5wb5l9
Stepping down from the soapbox now....
With fondant not being able to go in the refrigerator, what if the cake has cream cheese icing under the fondant. How would you work that out? None of my "teachers" in any of my cake decorating classes have been able to answer this question 
. Does this mean I cannot cover the cake with fondant until I am ready to take it out the fridge, the day of my event 
?
Thanks
With fondant not being able to go in the refrigerator, what if the cake has cream cheese icing under the fondant. How would you work that out? None of my "teachers" in any of my cake decorating classes have been able to answer this question
. Does this mean I cannot cover the cake with fondant until I am ready to take it out the fridge, the day of my event ? Thanks
If you are of the mind that fondant cannot be refrigerated then you can't use cream cheese. You could use cream cheese flavor though.
If you are of the mind that fondant cannot be refrigerated then you can't use cream cheese. You could use cream cheese flavor though.
I don't think i'm in the mind that it can't be refrigerated. I'm just repeating what i've been told. This is my first time with a request of cream cheese buttercream under fondant. Have you used the Lorann cream cheese oil flavoring? Is that what you mean?
I am also with the "better safe than sorry" doctrine. Too many ifs with it, ya know>? Just MY two cents.
If it can be refrigerated that is what I would recommend. I did leave my pumpkin cake out with cream cheese frosting and it was fine, but it was for me not a customer.
It drives me crazy on the controversy (sp?) over refrigerating fondant. YES you can refrigerate it. I do it all of the time with every single one of my cakes. It's more tempermental in hot weather but I just keep my kitchen airconditioned and bring it out of the frig. into the aircondtion room. It may sweat but no biggy it will evaporate as it come to room temperature. This time of year (I'm in Washington) I have no issues at all with it.
If you feel confident in your product and are certain that unrefrigerated cream cheese icing will not unfavorably impact anyone with a touchy stomach or anyone that is very old and has fragile health and you would be happy if anyone took a little swipe of icing and put a fingerful into a baby's mouth then leave the cake unrefrigerated.
But if you think that you would want to cya if someone came back and questioned your methods in the unlikely event that someone got sick and came to talk to you then play it safe.
Potential liability issues resulting from decisions made on questions like this are why home bakers do not have the option to be legal in many areas. Cream cheese is listed as a potentially hazardous ingredient in Tennessee.
I'm a real buzz kill.
I agree exactly. You never know who will be consuming your cakes, So always play it safe. If there were any problems, one story could greatly affect your business.
Yesterday I was at the grocery store and right as you walk in there were about 20 containers of cupcakes with cream cheese icing, just stacked up on a table. When I got back into the bakery area I asked the lady there about them. She told me that cream cheese icing does not need to be refridgerated and can be left out for 2-4 days. This was a major grocery chain, selling to young, old, and in between, cupcakes that had been sitting at room temp. I don't know who to believe on this one!!! But, for my own family and friends, I'm sticking to refridgeration or no cream cheese!!!
If you are of the mind that fondant cannot be refrigerated then you can't use cream cheese. You could use cream cheese flavor though.
I don't think i'm in the mind that it can't be refrigerated. I'm just repeating what i've been told. This is my first time with a request of cream cheese buttercream under fondant. Have you used the Lorann cream cheese oil flavoring? Is that what you mean?
Well I just didn't want to try & talk you out of everything all at once. Sometimes people have issues with refrigerating fondant. I do it all the time.
The Lorann cream cheese flavored oil to flavor your icing doesn't need to be refrigerated. Also I'm pretty sure there's a cream cheese flavored sleeve filling that does not require refrigeration. These are for sale online or at you local cake supply store not Michael's though.
http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_IN0423
Yesterday I was at the grocery store and right as you walk in there were about 20 containers of cupcakes with cream cheese icing, just stacked up on a table. When I got back into the bakery area I asked the lady there about them. She told me that cream cheese icing does not need to be refridgerated and can be left out for 2-4 days. This was a major grocery chain, selling to young, old, and in between, cupcakes that had been sitting at room temp. I don't know who to believe on this one!!! But, for my own family and friends, I'm sticking to refridgeration or no cream cheese!!!
The thing is you don't know what's in them. They could bestuffed with so much shtuff that they won't go bad. I would think that it was premade frosting.
Mike
I was just thinking the same thing. I'm sure they don't use the same recipes that we do.
Well, Thank you all, for the information. I rearranged my fridge to make room. I surely dont want anyone to be sick. Better safe than sorry
JanH and Mike (among others) did a great job of giving the facts already, but I still thought I'd put my two cents in. I'm a pediatrician, and unrefrigerated cream cheese would never fly if you asked the healthcare community (regardless of what proportion it is called for in the recipe - the difference between one hundred colonies of bacteria and thirty thousand, all still bacteria). I've eaten unrefrigerated food at one point or another as much as the next person, but as JanH said, we cannot go by anecdotal evidence for this sort of thing. We ALL know people who smoked their entire lives and never got lung cancer, and we ALL know people who eat well and exercise and live healthy lives but still have high cholesterol. That doesn't change the fact that the likelihood of having dangerous bacterial growth in a medium as rich as dairy is much higher when not refrigerated. That's where the guidelines came from.
Good luck!
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%
