Hi all! Would someone be able to explain - in technical terms - why it is important to use a shortening with trans fats rather than without? Be as specific as possible if you could - I'm just trying to understand the chemistry. Thanks!

use the shortening for what? pastry? cakes? icing? deep frying?

For frosting, sorry

I think some of it depends on the recipe. For example, when many MANY cc'ers were involved in a HUGE thread about how their icing wasn't working; they were calling/emails the crisco people to complain; big problems all the way around ..... I was sitting back and asking, "What? What? What happened? There's a problem? no kidding?" My recipe was working just fine .... I never noticed a diff at all. I didn't even notice that crisco had changed the formula and wasn't TOO aware of the big trans-fat debate going on.

When i shared my recipe, many came back with rave reviews about how the icing worked again. My recipe has dream whip in it but why it works, I've no idea.

that's why I say it may be the recipe. A recipe w/o my dream whip may not work with the zero trans fat. My recipe WITH the dream whip does. Why? no idea. I just go with it!

I'm not sure, either. I do know that my preferred store brand of shortening seems to have changed recently and this was confirmed by another CCer. It's softer coming out of the tub, I have to add a lot less liquid, and it doesn't smooth or crust as easily as it did before. With summer around the corner and no central air, I just picked up some high ratio yesterday to try to get a jump start on the heat and humidity that comes with it. In the meantime, I have a box of Dream Whip in the pantry just in case.

I don't understand the chemistry either, but I use the wilton recipe with 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening. When Crisco dropped all of the TransFat I ended up having to go to store brands (which don't have as much transfat as what crisco used to have, but they at least have some). I also had to reduce my liquid (which took me quite a few batches to figure out the exact amount)

Like others, not sure what the transfat does, but i know it made my icing WAY to soft and it wouldn't crust for me either.

Hmmm ok. I've wanted to try your recipe indydebi, but haven't come across any dream whip in my local grocery stores. Perhaps Wal-Mart.

Look on the higher shelf for it. I wouldn't want you to miss it.

And for the record I used store brand wannabe Dream Whip and it worked fine.

Not that I make icing in the amounts that you folks do any longer, but I tried Indydeb's icing and loved it. Now, maybe a year since I first tried it, we are no longer able to find Dream Whip locally-Walmart nor our local markets carry it or a generic type.

I went back to the "cut down" recipe that I used at the bakery with meringue powder blended into Sweetex until smooth, then adding hot water, flavors, salt and after thats incorporated into the shortening I add the conf. sugar and mix for 10 min.,

Just this evening I opened a new tub of Aldi shortening, which I switched to after Crisco removed the transfats. Low and behold, it was WAY too soft coming out of the tub. Looked at the label, sure enough, they have removed the transfat. I'm afraid my frosting will start pooling on the board and sliding off the cake sides again.....why can't they leave well enough alone?