Hi,
I'm new to the forum and pretty new with baking cupcakes. I have been testing recipes for a while and hopefully will be baking from home. I live in Istanbul Turkey.
Yesterday I tried a cream cheese frosting recipe. It was a basic recipe. Mix cream cheese, butter & powdered sugar and I added lemon extract.
The cream cheese in Turkey is alot runnier than any in the state so I strain it first. I beat the frosting for about 15 minutes but it still seemed crunchy from the powdered sugar.
Any ideas what I could have done wrong? Maybe its because of the cream cheese?
Do you think beating the butter and sugar first and adding the cream cheese later would work?
Your opinions are appreciated.
Thanks.

i would generally beat the butter and cream cheese together and then sift the sugar and add it to the mixture. the only 2 reasons i could think of is 1- sugar not being sifted 2- sugar being too much.. think about reducing ur sugar
ohh and i dont think u need to strain ur cream cheese.. well i kind of dont understand why u do it

I actually didn't sift the sugar.

I strain the cream cheese because it is quite watery and if I don't strain it the frosting becomes too runny.

The recipe I used was 2 ounce butter, 4 ounce cream cheese, 1 tbsp lemon extract & 2 cups powdered sugar. Maybe I should be adding the sugar in smaller batches?

I always cream my cream cheese and butter first until they are nice and blended (creamy) and then add my extract and then the SIFTED powder sugar a little at a time. Once it is all blended I take it off the mixture and finish mixing it up with a spatula so that I can get it nice and smooth without beating more air into it.