I am a cake decorator at Sam's Club in Louisiana. Every Sam's sells their icing. They also sell their whipped icing, and smaller buckets of colored buttercream. all for under $30. You don't need to refrigerate it bc the components will seperate. We sell almost everything we use. We sell the frozen boxes of 1/2 sheet cakes for $19 (4 in a box).

I haven't looked into getting the But-R Cream, but my Sam's sells the Better Cream for $19.99 for a 15lb tub. That stuff has lasted me several months now, sits in the freezer until I scoop out what I need and defrost it. I just use it for mock cheesecake fillings, and mock mousse fillings so the cake is more heat tolerant in the summer. Won't expire until next year!

I'd get the pastry pride stuff in liquid form, but the only place I could find it was the Cash N Carry about 5 hours away! Too long a drive, and shipping costs would be about the same. Sam's is pre-whipped.

You know most expiration dates are just guidelines. There's a difference between a 'best if used by' date and a date that's on say, meat and chicken...although even that depends on how it smells! I've bought chicken with a good date and had to return it because it was bad. And I've had whipped cream and sour cream stay good weeks after their 'expiration' dates.

Rule of thumb...if it smells good and tastes good, it is good. I wouldn't be throwing out buckets of frosting just because it was past the date. Taste it first. If it's shortening based, the only thing that can really happen is that it start to taste stale, right? Or maybe harden or separate? I don't know, I use a butter based BC. But I have had Crisco in my cabinets for very long periods of time with no ill effects.

I worked at 3 grocery stores where we used that. It isn't made by Sam's, they just use it and sell it. It is Kosher Parve, non-dairy. We used a regular Kosher in one kitchen and the parve in the other. The other kind was used more in the other places that weren't Kosher kitchens, but sometimes a But-r-cream came in and it was nicer to work with.

Have y'all noticed the ingredients in all of their icings? First of all, Rich's Bettercreme is known as a whipped frosting that is "non-dairy", yet has a label that says "Contains Milk, Soy". The baker at Sam's pointed that out. He said, "We have to put 'non-dairy' on the whipped frosting cakes people can buy, yet it says on the label that it has milk." He told me he felt guilty about doing that. (My son's allergic to dairy, so I was looking for alternatives).

Sam's But-R-Creme doesn't have dairy. Isn't that weird? It's label says, "Contains no major food allergies". You'd think that the ready-to-sell but-r-creme cakes would have "non-dairy" on their labels. Perhaps people don't like knowing their buttercream doesn't actually have cream?

The chocolate frosting does have milk in it.

Wow, I haven't never tried the buttercream. I think I will give it a try.

Does any one know if Costco does this as well and if so how is their buttercream? I don't have a sam's club membership but son has one for Costco.

does anyone know about how many cupcakes the sams club could cover? im doing 710 cupcakes this wk!