Hi, I'm new here, & love this site. I applaud all of you for your creativity, the cakes are beautiful. I wanted advice on the ready-to-use icing, not the Wilton brand, but Duncan Hines or Betty Cracker or even the Walmart brand. Is it ok to use it for decorating any cakes, ( mostly birthday cakes )and how long can an iced cake stand at room temp. I don't have room in my fridge to keep a 2 layer stacked cake overnite. It takes me too much time to make the icing from scatch. and I can never get the right consistancy, therefore it doesn't spread well. Thanks - Emicakes

you could certainly use it to ice the cake but it's going to be too thin for piping most borders or flowers. you could try mixing in some confectioners sugar to stiffen it up a bit.

Debbie

The cake will be more than fine if left out overnight- just remember to cover it well. When thing you could do is mix the wilton icing and a store brand icing together to make the wilton not taste so sweet. I have found that the store icings that are white- are not a true white, but when you mix wilton white with store brand white (like betty crocker, store generic, etc), the store brand white actually lightens in color.
The store brand icing will definetely be too thin to decorate with; but when mixing the two types of icing are mixed, it becomes the right consistency for decorating. I find that a container of icing is never enough to cover and decorate a 2 layer 8" round cake. Another 'time saver' that I do is mix up half a batch of buttercream icing, and then mix in a container of store brand icing- it works great.
Hope this helps!

Your cake with standard buttercream icing (almost any recipe) will be fine left out for days and days. You do not need to refrigerate your cakes unless they have a fresh fruit filling or such. Even then, I'm not in a hurry to refrigerate them.

Make your good icing, forget about the lousy store bought icing. Relax, have fun!!

On occasion I use store brand fudge icing. Mostly for lining transfers. But never ever do I use canned icing for decorating. It's not the right consistency at all.