The problem is that, at our house, it's just DH & me, and the dogs - who do their fair share of enjoying the yummyness that comes from the kitchen but, let's face it, they can only eat so much. I have, therefore, built up a list of people and departments at work that I can take goodies to, in order to limit the calorie buildup at our house.
I absolutely LOVE it when a special occasion arises that lets me flex my creative muscles - like birthdays! My mom used to decorate cakes semi-professionally (and was darn good at it, too!), so I use her "secret recipe" for the cake and had, for years, used her recipe for buttercream icing. But then something happened . . .
something terrible . . .
the powers-that-be changed the recipe for shortening to make it trans-fat-free! This may not seem too terrible, but in fact it turns mom's trusted recipe from yummy, stable icing into yummy, slide-y icing. Good for eating, not good for decorating. It's like watching a glacier melt over a milennia - sloooooowwwwwwwllllyyyyyy it slides off the edges. At first, I thought it was just me having a "consistency" issue, since cake decorating isn't something I do regularly and getting the icing just right is an art.
The first cake I did turned out relatively well - you can hardly tell there's any sliding, but the outline of the numbers didn't quite hold shape:
(this was especially cute because my boss loves the Cardinals & shared a last name with one of their players)
Then I read an article in a Pillsbury saying that the shortening was the culprit, but I did not pay heed. The next birthday:
Can you see the slipping around the edges? juuuuust barely, because I kept the cake in the fridge all night and, as I said, it happens slowly - so I didn't notice any slippage until the next morning, when it was too late!
So I went back to the Pillsbury book, which gave an "updated" recipe for icing that used meringue powder. When I bought the meringue powder, though, it had it's own recipe for buttercream icing -- both of these, of course, used different amounts of powdered sugar than mom's trusted recipe, and they both used WAY different amounts of meringue powder. So I used mom's recipe & guessed at the amount of meringue powder to use:
This was a cake for my personal trainer's birthday - the icing consistency was better, but not fixed completely.
Finally, I decided to just use the recipe that came in the meringue powder, from Wilton - because Wilton rules the world of cakes, cupcakes, icing, etc. This time, the result was much more awesome:
I take full responsibility for the slight bowing of the lines on the bottom edge - that's me, not the icing. Now I'm trying to decide what to do next - any ideas?
