teal cake 2

Comment

Comment by June Kowalczyk on February 17, 2013 at 7:14pm

Be careful Kelly how much you "beat" your icing. The more you beat it, especially at a higher speed,  the more air you incoporate. For a nice fluffy 7 min frosting, that's great, but to cover or pipe a cake, not so good. Too much air creates pockets and beating at high speed breaks down the structure of the shortening/butter. High speed generates heat, that is why. I have a KA mixer, and I never go over #3 when making my icing. Low & slow when making icing. Learned this from an older decorator when I took my very 1st lessons about 150 yrs ago.  Hee Hee

Comment by Kelly Chandley on February 17, 2013 at 3:02pm

Cool, thanks June. I only ever used meringue powder when making royal icing for cookies. I've had a problem recently with my butter cream not crusting so I'll give this a try. Not sure why it's not crusting, I haven't changed my recipe, just the way I add the ingredients and suddenly it won't crust. Hoping this will help. :-)

Comment by June Kowalczyk on February 17, 2013 at 2:56pm

I put about 2 tblsp in all my icing, be it shortening or butter based. Usually 2 to 4 cups of icing sugar. That is about one good size batch of icing.  Makes your icing firm up quicker and allows it to crust. Shortening based icing holds up better in warm weather. Much sturdier than butter, which can melt. In humid weather I mix 1/2 batch shortening based icing  with 1 small batch of royal icing. Stays hard, but not "crunchy"  like full royal icing. In this case I elimanate the meringue pwdr when making icing since I am mixing with royal icing.   :o)

Comment by Kelly Chandley on February 17, 2013 at 2:45pm

Won't the meringue powder make it dry hard like royal icing? Isn't that the ingredient in royal icing that makes it dry?

Comment by June Kowalczyk on February 17, 2013 at 12:23pm

Looks very pretty.... love the teal colour.   Meringue powder to the rescue.... fixes any icing......  :o)

Comment by Goreti on February 17, 2013 at 11:51am

pretty