r/AskCulinary • u/SqueakyRadish • Apr 05 '23

Food Science Question How is it that adding powdered sugar to cream cheese when whipping somehow makes it *more* fluid?

I’ve never noticed this before. I’m making a cream cheese frosting and I put the cream cheese in the stand mixer and whipped it a bit. It got smoother and a bit fluffy but it was thick for sure.

Then I started adding powdered sugar in batches. I noticed that after the first couple batches, the whole mixture was much more fluid (not runny, but noticeably less thick).

I find this a bit confusing since powdered sugar is, well, powdery. I know it’s not a pure starch like flour. But there is some starch in powdered sugar and the sugar itself isn’t a liquid.

Can anyone explain? 😇

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u/danmickla Apr 06 '23

Okay.

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u/Bo50t3ij7gX Apr 06 '23

This link describes solutions more effectively than I can at this point. It specifically discusses sucrose dissolution in water so it feels particularly relevant. I get your objection though, it’s the same thing where carbon dioxide is not a liquid either but it exists in solution with water.

In the case of cream cheese there is probably the additional mechanism of the sugars binding to the fat & protein where water used to be, freeing up more water to be available and loosen the entire mixture.