I iced a cake last night. I answered the phone and when I came back the icing had separated. It slid off the cake and just looked awful. I scraped it off and added another 1/2 lb. of powdered sugar to it just to get it to hold shape. I don't know what happened. I use 1/2 crisco and 1/2 butter crusting buttercream. My kitchen was cool. I've never had icing to look like that before. Has anyone ever had this to happen?

anyone?

Wow, I can't figure that out either. How much sugar did you start off with? How many tablespoons of liquid (water & flavorings) did you add? How long did you beat the icing with the mixer?

yeah I use a 1/2 and 1/2 recipe all the time....never heard or seen that happen! Details please.

I used 2 lbs of p. sugar (like I always do), 1/3 c. water, 1c. butter, 1 t. vanilla and 1 c. crisco. I've never had this to happen before. I got this recipe from a Roland Winbeckler book. I use a timer and followed the times that it says in his directions. I don't know what happened.

I iced this cake 3 times before it looked right. It's the ballerina cake in my photos.

Was your cake warm? This sounds very odd. You can always add 1T of meringue powder to every pound of sugar to act as a stabilizer.

I have had it happen once--the butter was really soft so I assume that it may have been too soft and it seperated. Just a thought.

The cake was cold. Maybe it was the butter. I hope it doesn't happen anymore! Oh, I delivered the ballerina cake last night and they loved it. They paid me more that the price that I quoted them. I told them just to give me the original price but they said that I was underpricing my cakes and they paid me what they cake was worth to them. I love customers like this! AND, they ordered another cake!

Definately meringue powder next time.

I looked at your cake and it is cute as a button. I see why they keep coming back for more. I would like to know if you use some sort of lettering chart or do you just write that beautifully normally. Please share your secret?

I cheated on the writing. I have a wilton letter press that say Happy Birthday and just pressed that on the cake and iced over it. I printed the name out on my computer with a font that matched the Happy Birthday letters. I used a tootpick to try to put the name on the cake, then iced over it. My own handwriting is not so good.

I'm also gonna try the meringue powder next time. Will it change the flavor of the icing?

Thanks! But that is NOT cheating.....that is using your creativity, ingenuity and tools. I have tons of fonts I've printed out, of the alphabet, to help me.

No, I do not think meringue powder changes the taste....at least all my customers don't think so....they rave about the icing!

I tried making icing once without meringue powder, and it was a disaster. I will always use meringue powder. It doesn't change the taste of the icing at all. All that suger covers up any taste it might add.

Thanks for all the help!

Well cncgirl00, I've been there before! I made a cake once and the exact same thing happened to me. In my situation I concluded that I let the butter get too soft. Normally if I use butter in my icing I just let it get to room temperature but it still holds it's shape pretty well. The time my icing slid off of my cake I had placed the butter in the bowl to soften &, when I got ready to make my icing, it was so soft that I could have stirred it up with a spoon. I made the icing going by the normal recipe but when I iced the cake it looked almost shiny (that should have been a warning sign.) I finished decorating it & within an hour my top boarder had slid down the side of the cake. At first I couldn't figure it out. I thought that maybe I had made the boarder too big & put it too close to the edge but after I thought about it more, I thought it was probably the butter. Hopefully that will never happen to you again. BTW, your ballerina cake is just the cutest & whatever happened to it before, you would never know it by looking at that picture!! Great save!

Appreciate all the feedback. Hopefully, I won't have this trouble again. What should have taken me 45 min. or so to decorate took over 3 hrs! It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I still wasn't happy with but I was so tired at the end I was just glad I didn't have to trash it!