Hi! I recently decorated a cake and had a massive problem with the icing melting off the cake- and I read a post you had made that might have shed some light on my problem...
I live in West Tennessee, and it had been raining for a couple of days, but was fairly cold outside. I baked a vanilla cake, carved it, and then froze it like I do all of my cakes because it is so much easier to ice them later (I have never had a problem doing this before...). I needed a black base so I mixed black food coloring that I had purchased at hobby lobby in with store bought (Pillsbury) chocolate icing and iced the frozen cake and then decorated it. And much to my dismay the black foundation of icing just kind of "melted" right off the cake! I was horrified. I have never had that happen before! I even baked another cake and made more icing but mixed some extra powdered sugar in the icing to stiffen it up a bit and it did the exact same thing as the 1st cake! It was cool in my kitchen as I was decorating so I just cannot figure out why the icing did that??? I was hoping you maybe could help me- or do you know where I can find out about this?
Thank you so much!!

Volcakery,

I've never worked with Duncan Hines or any store bought icing, so I have no idea what the consistency would be like. I know that in Florida, it's very humid, so if I freeze my cake and then ice it, the frosting could get watery as the cake comes to room temperature. I no longer freeze my cakes for that reason.

VolCakery
-store brought icing (betty crocker, duncan hines, pillsbury, etc) start out with a funky consistency. I've had students bring them to try and decorate with no good ... it alone will start to melt
-then you added food coloring to it which will also change the consistency of icing. When wanting to add color you should use gel coloring.

Next time I would recommend making your own icing; make it chocolate & then add a gel color to get the black. Since black & red are notorious for their taste I use semi-sweet chocolate to make chocolate to cut down on the bitterness if I have to use a lot of that color for the cake.

HTH

Do you have a recipe for a good stiff icing?

This is the recipe I use it works great

http://cakecentral.com/recipes/6992/indydebis-crisco-based-buttercream-icing