Cream Cheese Icing - how long unrefrigerated?

[walker]

Whenever I make cream cheese icing for cupcakes, I never know how long it's safe to leave this out on the counter.
If I refrigerate it, the icing gets hard plus it's hard to cram all these cupcakes in there.
Any ideas?

[cyberroo]

I've left out frosted cupcakes for days with no ill effects. In my experience, the cake will get stale before the frosting goes off, cream cheese or butter-based.

[HillJ]

I'm in NJ so the humidity & summer heat would prevent me from leaving cream cheese out. How about frosting your cupcakes right before serving to avoid the hardening?

[walker]

I'm in San Francisco and most of the time, the summer is quite cool here. In fact, the other night I had to turn on the heat, believe it or not.

[HillJ]

Lucky you walker! This week was quite hot & humid in NJ and I wasn't able to leave anything out on the counter (let alone cream cheese).

[dexters]

I've left them out overnight before and lived to tell about it.