I didn't care for the way BC piped after adding so much brown. It became to hard and not smooth enough. Can I pipe with canned chocolate frosting on top of regular BC? Will it be so soft that it either bleeds or melts?

Can you not add a little milk to the brown icing to thin it a bit? I'm not sure about the canned icing as I've never used it, but maybe you can add some powdered sugar to it and make it work for piping.

you can use canned icing but i dont think it will turn out as well, try adding milk of water a little at a time until you get your desired consistency.

You can use canned icing, I saw it at a demo once at our cake club... a very nice henna design... I remember it because I was surprised at how pretty it looked & didn't realize you could :0)

Personally I (& the demonstrator too) use homemade butter cream or royal icing... but to play with or to practice with.... there's no harm :0)

YEs, I've used it when I needed just a little chocolate brown color and didn't want to make a whole batch of choc icing.

It is a good consistency for piping. I've used it before when I just needed a little bit.

This is good to know.

Yes u can...
I stepped in it big time when I was teaching and a gal brought canned frosting to class. I told her in my most dignified teaching manner that it would not work. She proceeded to add a little powd. sugar to thicken it a bit...and it worked just fine! We were making roses I think...it made them and they even formed a crust.
Reading the other posts here about using it to make designs...what a great idea! I bet the brown would be alot easier to make black to pipe scrolls and such too. Guess I'll put a couple cans in the pantry!!!

They even have some in a can now ready to pipe with 3 or 4 different tips. Saw it in Safeway.

I was told by a Wilton instructor, can icing was the best for little bitty work. Supposedly, the stuff is extra special when you need to do lines.

When Norm Davis told us that is what he uses, I thought, well, if it is ok for him, why not for anyone else? I would say absolutely - I wouldn't use a lot of it, but for small details. Yes.

You can use canned icing, but it tastes "funny," in fact I think it is terrible. I tried an experiment with 25 people and all but one preferred the buttercream, and since you can make it in 30 seconds why buy that goo?

Here's the link:
http://www.examiner.com/x-23850-Fairfield-County-Food-Examiner~y2010m3d11-Canned-icing-versus-home-made--is-there-a-difference

I have used chocolate canned icing when I wanted to make black before I discovered Americolor. I would add some powder sugar to the canned icing to make it thicker and easier to pipe. Then I would add the Wilton black color to the icing. I didn't have any problems using it for outline.

It sounds like the concensus is that small lines are okay...not so much for large areas.

thanks!

I just used canned icing this afternoon to ice a rose swirl on 18 cupcakes. It work fine. It was about as stiff as the Wilton stiff icing IMO.

The taste on the other hand is another issue. While I have used the chocolate icing in the past, this is my first time using Strawberry. And after making SMBC all weekend long I wish I had taken the time to make another batch for these cupcakes. It is definitely not to my liking. But they are going on top of cake mix cupcakes so I figure it is OK, I hope.