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

I mix the cream cheese frosting with some buttercream for a stiffer consistency when decorating with it.
It should be fine left out overnight.

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.

It doesn't matter if it actually can, or can't. It is a potentially hazardous food, you can not control the temp of this cake once it leaves your hands. Tell her it needs to be refrigerated.

Mike

To be on the safe side, I really think it needs to be refrigerated.

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....

I disagree Jan. No matter the amount of a perishable food that isn't cooked needs to be refrigerated.

Mike

Well, Mike, you can't go wrong with "Better Safe Than Sorry".

Guess I'll be putting my uneaten carrot cake in the fridge from now on since I am fast approaching the "elderly" category.

Seriously, this is good advice from experts who know. Thanks for sharing.

Kim

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

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.

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!!!

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!