I didn't like the taste of it anyway but when it made it Sunday night, it looked fine. I did have to put in some more water than what the recipe asked for because it was very very very stiff. Finally I felt okay about it.
I left it in a closed container in the microwave. The house is cool. Granted, the container didn't shut completely tight.
Yesterday in class, I look at it and it looks almost like the texture of brown sugar. It's in big lumps here and there and if anybody's had queso fresco, well that's the best I can describe it. Didn't look like bc at all. I added color and it made it worse! I was able to decorate my cake and smooth it but it doesn't look blue (americolor), it looks blue with white speckles like I meant for it to look like that. It's also very greasy looking (has a wet finish). It did finally crust but I'm wondering why my bc turned out that way.

Was it the non air tight container?

My teacher thinks it was the shortening. I purposely avoided Crisco and bought Hill Country Food brand because it had some trans fat. I have a huge cake this weekend and I would had been so upset if this would had happened!

Here's a picture.



On a side note, my teacher is awesome. She's bringing me a huge thing of hi ratio shortening so that I can try it. I told her about my cakes and she said she'd bring me enough to make 2 huge double batches. She wants me to try it.

Do you have a picture of the icing? That would help in troubleshooting for you.

I meant to put it up and forgot. But there it is.. I tried to take a better pic but with the coloring and my dumb phone, it was hard.

Without seeing it in person, I tend to think your teacher is correct. Most times when my students have issues with their icing which can't be resolved by adding more liquid or sugar, it has to do with the shortening they have used. I do prefer Hi-Ratio shortening as well. For class, though, I just use Harris Teeter brand (more cost effective than Hi-Ratio) and that works really well for me, Crisco works as well, but I think the HT brand works even better. I've had problems with Target Brand myself and I've also had students use organic brands of butter mixed with their shortening which did not work well at all. I'm not familiar with Hill Foods, but make sure that any shortening you use is white & vegetable based. I'm sure your instructor stressed this, but I do find that there is so much information for students to absorb it is easy to forget details. That is incredibly generous of your instructor to give you some Hi-Ratio. Enjoy your class!

I had white speckles with blue but I think it was the salt that I added to my frosting, I was never sure.

I had white speckles with blue but I think it was the salt that I added to my frosting, I was never sure.

I had white speckles with blue but I think it was the salt that I added to my frosting, I was never sure.

I had white speckles with blue but I think it was the salt that I added to my frosting, I was never sure.

Its best to add the salt when you mix your liquids & shortening, this way it can dissolve fully before you mix in the sugar. Also, make sure you mix the shortening/liquid/salt until it is very smooth and creamy, then add the sugar (sifted is best) and mix at low speed to avoid incorporating air.

How much water did you add?

Did your icing look separated after you added the color? The white being more solid and the liquid being blue?

I made the recipe in the book. It said on there to add 7-8 tsp of water or milk (i used water) and it was still completely stiff. So I added 1 more tsp, making it a total of 9 tsp. It was still stiff but not so stiff that I couldn't even move it.

I used every.........

I AM A MORON. A BIG MORON.

I just realized that I'm a moron. I had to go and check it out myself and confirm that.

I had to make 2 batches right??? Wellllllll I doubled everything BUT the stupid water. DUH. I only used 9 tsp TOTAL for

2 cups shortening
2 tsp flavoring
2 lb ps
2 tbs meringue powder
2 pinches of salt

all that with only 9 tsp of water.



Like I said, I left it out closed in the microwave in a cool house. THen, the next evening I took it to class. I added several tsp of water to make it thinner, medium etc. It didn't fix. Shouldn't it had fixed? Or had I screwed it up the night before and it was unsalvageable?

We have all have weird mistakes........When I was a little girl my darling grandmother brought us peanut butter cookies, but said she could figure out what was wrong with them. My mother took one look and burst out laughing as my darling grandmother forgot the peanut butter.

When I first started baking I could not figure out why one of my chocolate cakes seemed so dense. Well I leveled the top and took a nibble and it was horrible. I had forgotten my sugar.

Let me give you some more hints for your frosting. Take your meringue powder and soak it in the water to dissolve this should help with fine lumps. Then use your recipe water measurement as a starting point. You may need to add even more water during dry weather. You should be able spread your frosting easily - think light and fluffy. Also, I sift my powdered sugar and never buy the cheap off brand as it may have fine lumps from the corn starch. Also, make sure you beat it long enough for its fluffiness. HTH

TxSugar- I'm not sure if it looked more seperated after the fact but right when I opened it in class I thought WTH? It looked all lumpy and hard. Just like brown sugar, the way it lumps. But once I played with it, the texture looked like queso fresco, curdled almost. Adding the blue just made it worse because you could see white and blue. Oh dear.

Tiptop- haha that's funny about forgetting stuff. Doh... What do you mean by "Then use your recipe water measurement as a starting point."? Does this mean to NOT count the meringue powder/water mixture as liquid in my recipe? Or DO count it? Sorry... I do buy the good brand ps and although it says 10x I still sift it at home. For the wilton bc, I used my KA for about 11-12 minutes in total including creaming my shortening for a couple of minutes. All on low speed.

Fullhouse- My teacher said that crisco (even though there's no trans fat) works but to do a 3/4 cup of crisco and 1/4 butter.



I'm going to make a small batch of the bc again to see what happens.

While adding in the water should have helped, I think the issue came from not adding enough water to begin with. I'm guessing here, and thinking maybe because it sat over night. Maybe that part was kinda 'dried out' (best word I can come up with at the moment) and when you added the water it just didn't absorb any?

Do you still have the icing? If so, why not take the mixer to it, and see if it comes back together any?

Keep in mind the recipe in the book is for stiff icing. I always give my students a hand out with the different consistency broken down on it. I actually go by the measurements in the books before these, which were 2 Tablespoons of water for stiff, 3T for medium, and 4T for thin.

The measurement that have now is actually 2 Tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons. It seems that adding those extra teaspoons actually makes my icing too soft, where I live.

What you said about absorbtion is right. When I added more water during class, it was very hard to mix it in. Not to mention, I tried the spray bottle method to smooth it, and the water mist would sit up on top instead of evaporating as it should had. Eventually it did dry but I noticed that it wasn't absorbing it. It was just sitting there then dripping some which made the cake board a total mess. All in all the cake tastes good but meh on the bc and I don't like how greasy it looks. I will try to play with it when I get home...

I kept messing with my bc during class that I had no time to decorate it except for some dots. Boo.
See how greasy it is?

The humidity is weird in my area sometimes dry as a desert and some times tropical as a jungle. The reason I stated using the suggested water measurement as a starting point is that some times you have to just adjust for the humidity. Sometimes more and sometimes less. HTH

I'd try another batch and see how it works. I use the Wilton recipe all the time. The greasy look may come from working it a lot, also from the warmth going on everywhere. I've never used the spray bottle, so I don't now how that affects the icing.

I'm not sure about the store you are at, but my classroom is hella hot and dry (gumpaste dries out very fast in it).

Also you said you didn't like the taste, are you making it with just the vanilla or with the vanilla and butter flavor?

For all the problems you had with the icing, you did a good job on icing it!

Thanks.. I loved the water spray method.

Our room was actually cool.

For flavoring I think I used a tsp of vanilla and a tsp of almond. Maybe it was the almond because I'm not used to it as I've only used vanilla for bc but I had blamed it on the meringue powder. The bc just tasted a bit bitter. Not too bad but like towards the end. And actually, the next day in class, it tasted much better (but looked like crap! ha). Teacher said it tasted good.

I always use half and half vanilla/butter, even if I add in some almond.

The bitter could be from the MP. You don't have to have it in your icing, but I have found that in Texas in the summer it really helps your icing hold up better.