How to Decorate a Pumpkin Pie with Cream Cheese Frosting

What You’ll Need to Create this Pumpkin Pie Design

• Pumpkin Pie. You can use my perfect pumpkin pie recipe if you’d like, but you can also use your own recipe or one that is store-bought! Whatever you use, ensure it’s baked and fully cooled before decorating!
• Small Batch Cream Cheese Frosting. The recipe for this small batch cream cheese frosting is below. You will have leftover cream cheese frosting, so if you have multiple pumpkin pies to decorate, this should work for 2 of them. You can also use store-bought cream cheese frosting from the baking aisle of your grocery store.
• A Fun Design to Use as a Guide. I went with a simple design I found on Pinterest, but use what you would like. I would not go too crazy with the design, though!
• Small Round Decorating Tip. I used Wilton’s no. 2 decorating tip, but you can also use no. 1 or 3. Ateco’s equivalent is almost the same, but I would stick with either their size 1 or 2 tips. With either brand, you must use a coupler with the piping tip.
• Small Piping Bag. A 10-inch or 12-inch bag will work perfectly here. Use what brand you feel most comfortable using.
• Revolving Cake Stand. My cake stand comes from Ateco, and I love it. Wilton also makes one, but is not as tall. Using one makes it easy to rotate as you work.

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How Do I Make a Small Batch of Cream Cheese Frosting?

This small batch cream cheese recipe will make plenty of frosting to pipe a design on two, maybe three, pumpkin pies. If you only need to make one pie, then half the amounts listed below.

Use your hand mixer or your stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.

• 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons, 31 grams) Unsalted Butter, room temperature
• 2 ounces (44 grams) of Cream Cheese, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 cup (115 grams) Sifted Powdered Sugar

Beat the unsalted butter and cream cheese on medium-high speed until well blended. Add in the vanilla extract. Switch the mixer speed to low and add in the sifted powdered sugar.

Don’t skip sifting the powdered sugar! You can end up with lumps in your frosting, which will clog up your small rounded piping tip.

Helpful Pumpkin Pie Decorating Tips

Tip No. 1. Make sure your pumpkin pie has completely cooled before you add your cream cheese frosting design.

Tip No. 2. Keep your design simple. This tip is more for beginners and people like myself who don’t like overly complicated ways of decorating cakes and pies. If you are an experienced cake decorator, however, then a more advanced design would be fine!

Tip No. 3. Practice before piping. Do some practice areas on a paper towel or plate before starting your actual design.

Tip No. 4. Start with the larger shapes of your design first. You’ll be able to fill the space around them with smaller shapes afterward.

Tip No. 5. Continually rotate your pie using the revolving cake stand as you decorate to create implied movement.

Tip No. 6. Don’t stress if you mess up a little! You can either cover it up with more frosting or carefully take an offset spatula and lift up on the cream cheese frosting to remove it. I did both when piping another pumpkin pie I made!

Tip No. 7. Have fun!