i have been using the same recipe, using walmart all vegetable shortening and powder sugar. lately my icing has been grainy and air holey. the walmart icing has trans fats in it. before, my icing was smooth, now its grainy and puffy looking. what is the problem???

Are you using any other ingredients?

Could you be over whipping it? That could make it airy, I don't know about grainy. I also know Walmart has two different kinds of shortening. Are you sure you got the one you usually do? I have made that mistake before because the cans are identical except for the title.

I usually use butter based buttercream since that's what it's supposed to be made with lol, but recently I tried out the walmart brand all veg shortening and powdered sugar because I've been taking the wilton classes and my instructor wanted me to make that crap recipe.
I also noticed it was gritty and full of bubbles. Perhaps I over whipped it, too? I'm not certain. That explains the air bubbles, but not the grittiness.

All I know is that I have to make another batch of it for Tuesday, and this time I'll try my best to not over-whip, sift the powdered sugar and see what happens.

i am using the walmart all vegetable shortening with 3 grams tranfat. i do use whipping cream or half and half though. but yester daysi added a cup of shortening to the icing and it was smooth again like it used to. funny, i did not had to do this before. i hope that walmart did not put the wrong shortening in the can since the earlier post said that both cans were identical. but the cans i get has 3 grams of transfats.

I think it is the shortening. Everytime I have used the walmart brand that has happened to me.
I now stick with crisco (haven't gotten to the high-ratio stuff yet) and dominos powder sugar over the store brand too. And I always sift the powder sugar. It makes it much smoother. hth

you use crisco with o trans fat with no problems???

I tried the walmart shortening once, and that was it. I ended up throwing out an almost full can of it. That was the one time my icing had the greasy mouth fill to it.

I use Crisco and have ever since I started baking. I haven't had any problems with it.

Also grainy could be coming from the powder sugar. At my Walmart GV brand powder sugar is no longer make from pure cane sugar. Beet sugar can give the icing a gritty feeling/taste. I'm back to using name brand for the powder sugar even though it costs more. Even Sam's brand, the 7lb bag of powder sugar has gone to beet sugar.

Ditto to TexasSugar on the powdered sugar! I have tried Wal Marts powdered sugar and it was terribly gritty (my butter was the same so the only difference was the sugar). A couple of other store brands were bad too.

Does anyone know if Costco sugar is beet or cane? The bag doesn't say which makes me wonder, but it still seems to have a smooth texture.

If the bag doesn't say pure cane or cane anywhere and it is a store brand then chances are it is beet sugar.

If you look in the ingredients, it should say pure cane or cane sugar and cornstarch.

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thank you!!!!

I've used the Walmart all vegetable shortening for a long time but have seen a change in the consistency of it. One of my cans was kind of slimy and definately didn't produce a very sturdy bc and caused me headaches! The last couple cans have been a little more solid but I'm thinking of changing back to Crisco.