Royal

[Heather]

It's been a year since I've worked with royal icing, I forgot how hard it is to get to the right consistency and then how much my hand, wrist, and arm hurts when I'm using it! (especially irritates the tendinitis I have in my wrist) I love the stuff but I wish there was an easier version to work with!

[2sdae]

I use the color flow if I can on a piece or also the sugar veil cing stuff too. What are you making? Maybe one of these could be used instead.

[Heather]

I'm making flowers for the baby cake I'm doing for next weekend. I was going to do the plain design that came with the cake pan (carriage) but I found some new ideas online to add flowers and color flow bluebirds that I thought was adorable so I'm doing that! I love how the flowers come out and it's so nice to use a good icing (besides that soft duncan hines I've been using lol)

I'm going to try out a new buttercream recipe someone gave me, hopefully it will taste better than the wilton class buttercream. If not, I'll be using the duncan hines again..I want something that will dry stiffish enough to do designs, not be so soft I have to throw it in the fridge every 5 mins, taste really yummy, and not have to be refrigerated. I can't wait to find it!

[2sdae]

sugar shack's butter cream recipe is awesome and does just that!

[Heather]

I haven't heard of that, is it something sold here or is it a recipe? I just know the basics!

[Amanda]

It's a recipe. She uses a special flavoring and coffee creamer in her icing. Very interesting....

[2sdae]

I also have a recipe I use that uses 1/2 butter and 1/2 high ratio shortening that works well and is very yummy too!

Serves/Yields:
Prep. Time: 7-10 min
Cook Time:
Category: Frostings
Difficulty: Easy

Introduction

This recipe was made from trial and error. I made two mixtures of buttercream. One with salted butter which was too buttery (salty) and one with unsalted butter which was still too sweet. So I combined the two and it became the best buttercream I've ever tasted. I use this recipe for all of my cake orders and it is a hit every time!!!ingredients
* sift all dry ingredients prior to measuring.*

1 stick butter (unsalted)
1 stick butter (salted)
1 cup shortening
2lb bag of confectioner's sugar
3 teaspoons clear vanilla extract or I use vanilla bean paste<<but that makes it cream colored not white. If you want a true white use clear vanilla.
1 tablespoon meringue powder
5-6 tablespoons of milk (cold)Directions

Cream butter and shortening. Add clear vanilla extract & meringue powder, then add confectioner's sugar. Allow confectioner's sugar to blend well then add milk. For thinner consistency, add more than 6 tablespoons of milk.

[Heather]

Thank you I'll try that one out instead of the one I was going to!

Here's the one I got from someone else, With all the liquids in it I was worrying that it wouldn't hold up enough for me (I live in FL and any humidity kills the icing here) I just don't have much time for trial and error right now. I'm sure I'll try them all at one point!

2 LB. Bag of powdered sugar
3/4 Cup of Crisco shortening
3/4 Cup of Pre-creamed shortening Or other brand
2 Tsps. of Clear Butter Flavor (you can divide....use 1Tsp of clear vanilla and 1 Tsp of butter)
5 TBLS. of Heavy whipping cream (liquid)
6 to 7 TBLS. of Half and Half (liquid) add more if needed and too thick

Mix well until it's blended smooth.

You will learn too how much liquid you need to add or delete, depending on how thick you want your frosting to be for spreading on your cakes.....and you can always add more powdered sugar to a batch to make thicker for your flowers or roses.

[2sdae]

Boy that's a lot of shortening! This one holds up pretty well here in the ohio valley humidty! Pretty similar in spring and summer to yours.

[cakebaker]

I use all shortening in my icing and customers love it. I don't use butter flavoring either...can't stand the smell or taste of it and I love butter! It's just the artificial stuff is icky to me.

The more butter you add, the less stable the icing. It also yellows the icing rather than give you a snowy white. I only add butter if I'm doing chocolate icing.

The best icing I've ever tried ( I like Sugarshack's method, but any recipe can be done using her method) is from a poster on cakecentral named indydebi. It's my standard icing now.

2 lb p.sugar
1/3 to 1/2 cup milk, for consistency
2 or 3 Tbsp clear vanilla
1-1/3 cup crisco
3 tbsp powdered dream whip

Simple, easy and delicious and no butter. These are approximate measurements on the liquid. You just add the liquid until you get it as thick or thin as you want.

I'm going to have to do some checking and probably make some changes with using the high ratio shortening, but I'm sticking with this one!

I've been to Florida enough to know, nothing matches the humidity there. I wouldn't put butter in my icings in the summer for any amount of money.