Hi,

First off... let me say I love her icing. When it behaves

Yes it has moments of temper tantrums... but after much experimentation and a few ruined batches... I set out to see WHAT on EARTH was going on!

After a few grainy batches... (one I froze in the deep freezer because Im cheap and figured the kids could play with it) I found... TADAH!

I can get it back to the right consistency if I started throwing in Hi-Ratio bit by bit!!... until it was as smooth as silk

I noticed... when the icing was grainy... it was very sweet too. Hmm.

I took a VERY grainy batch out of my freezer... threw in the Hi-Ratio... and TADAH!!! It worked again!!

So hope this helps someone... as throwing out a batch of this size can be costly.

Blessings
Kim

If you follow her recipe to the letter, it is perfect! I used Alpine hgh ratio forever, and even just having the different brand of shortning made a difference. Once I switched to Sweetex - it is PERFECT each and every time - and even if it sets for a week, NO air bubbles at all. I LOVE IT!

I just started using sugarshack's recipe and have used Harris Teeter brand shortening with good results. That is good for those of us in the Virginia/North Carolina areas.

i have had my sugarshack bc turn out chalky/gritty 4 times now in the last 2 years and i blame it on a bad bag of ps because i turned around and made a whole new batch and the only difference was a different bag of ps (i buy it in 4lb bags from BJ's wholesale club). I even wrote to Dominio's about the issue--never heard back from them as of yet. yes, extremely frustrating/expensive to have to dump 5qt mixing bowl of bc into the trash!!!

so pinkbox you say just add more hi ratio to the gritty bc and it will smooth out????? i hope that i do not have to ever test this out but thank you for posting this

Oh, I though I was the only one that had the gritty problem. For ages now I have been making buttercream with no problem but my last few batches have been gritty and thrown out.
Like pinkbox I made a batch last week and didn't have the heart to throw it out so I too popped it in the freezer for the kids.
I took it out the other day whipped it up and it was perfect!!