I had such an awful time today trying to make my royal icing for my cake decorating class! I was ready to rip my hair out because of the difficulties I was having! I made the stiff royal icing without a problem, but we had to also make a lot of medium consistency royal icing. The course book didn't tell us how much water to add to thin it down and our teacher had not mentioned that either. I added a tablespoon of water, which is less than I'd add to 5 cups of buttercream to thin it, but of course it was far too much and I got a soupy mess!
I started adding small amounts of confectioner's sugar to try to thicken it back up. I added more and more and it was still soupy. I finally added a bunch more c. sugar and it seemed ok, so I whipped it another 5 minutes. I ended up with a lot of air bubbles in it. This was a bit more stiff than the original stiff I'd made, but I figured it would be easier to thin down in class than to thicken so I left it like that.
I mixed the colorings in, but it was so stiff that my hand was throbbing with pain from mixing it! Well, done with that I had to start cleaning up.. and all the little tiny bits of royal that had dropped were of course flaking everywhere. The icing that had spattered on the mixer were glued there and had to be melted off with water. What a mess! Oh and I should mention here that my Kitchenaid mixer is extremely LOUD! It has a very bad grinding sound on every setting that makes it sound like it's ready to quit. I got it a couple years ago from eBay as a factory refurb., but I am not sure it will make it through too many more batches of frosting, let alone any more bread kneading. Grah!!!
The ranting continues.. because the day kept getting worse.. --> So I got to class late and my icing still wasn't right. The teacher thought it would be ok, but when I tried to use it for the daffodils, I couldn't squeeze any out the tip 3, let alone tip 1. I tried and tried! My hand was throbbing in pain and it wasn't working at all! Finally I had to take it all out, splitting the bag in the process, and add more water and mix it up again. By the time I finally got the bags filled with anything usable, the class was two flowers beyond that.
All my frosting needed to be thinned and then of course I was rushing and added a few drops too much water. Yup, I'd overthinned it and had almost unusably thin soupy frosting again. Ugh! I split three bags trying to get this all done and then.. THEN I ran out of couplers! I had eight of them going, but that wasn't enough. I had also tried to prepare ahead of time and had five bags prepared with couplers in them already, but it wasn't enough. We needed 10 or so tonight! The other couplers were in bags from last week still with royal icing in them, so that was just a joyous time suck to get them out and use those.
I couldn't do the daffodils at all because of the overly stiff frosting preventing me from squeezing out the center bell part, and the teacher was demo'ing the primrose before I could even start the pansy. I did finally manage to do some pansies, some primroses, and some daffodils before class was over, though, once I got my frosting (mostly) working and filled into bags with couplers. I was very frustrated and annoyed and ready to give up, though. I didn't, but I was really having a hard time. I had bits of frosting everywhere, too, including in my hair and on my shirt and all over the towel I was using on the table.
So I finally clean up and pack up and get home, only to find that I have to throw out two trays (flower formers) full of handmade hard earned flowers becuase they were squished in the box from being on top of each other before they had dried enough. The humidity from the freezing rain we're having tonight wasn't helping with that at all and probably was causing difficulty getting the consistency right, as well, but it was still horribly annoying!
I needed to share this here because who else is going to understand how annoying it is when your royal icing isn't the right consistency, you run out of couplers, your hand is hurting from stirring coloring into stiff frosting, when the bags start splitting repeatedly, and those stupid bits of royal icing that get everywhere?!
I had a very hard day in the world of cake decorating. It just sucked! And of course I have to make more flowers for my final cake next week. Sigh.
Thanks for listening, if anyone did..
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I started adding small amounts of confectioner's sugar to try to thicken it back up. I added more and more and it was still soupy. I finally added a bunch more c. sugar and it seemed ok, so I whipped it another 5 minutes. I ended up with a lot of air bubbles in it. This was a bit more stiff than the original stiff I'd made, but I figured it would be easier to thin down in class than to thicken so I left it like that.
I mixed the colorings in, but it was so stiff that my hand was throbbing with pain from mixing it! Well, done with that I had to start cleaning up.. and all the little tiny bits of royal that had dropped were of course flaking everywhere. The icing that had spattered on the mixer were glued there and had to be melted off with water. What a mess! Oh and I should mention here that my Kitchenaid mixer is extremely LOUD! It has a very bad grinding sound on every setting that makes it sound like it's ready to quit. I got it a couple years ago from eBay as a factory refurb., but I am not sure it will make it through too many more batches of frosting, let alone any more bread kneading. Grah!!!
The ranting continues.. because the day kept getting worse.. --> So I got to class late and my icing still wasn't right. The teacher thought it would be ok, but when I tried to use it for the daffodils, I couldn't squeeze any out the tip 3, let alone tip 1. I tried and tried! My hand was throbbing in pain and it wasn't working at all! Finally I had to take it all out, splitting the bag in the process, and add more water and mix it up again. By the time I finally got the bags filled with anything usable, the class was two flowers beyond that.
All my frosting needed to be thinned and then of course I was rushing and added a few drops too much water. Yup, I'd overthinned it and had almost unusably thin soupy frosting again. Ugh! I split three bags trying to get this all done and then.. THEN I ran out of couplers! I had eight of them going, but that wasn't enough. I had also tried to prepare ahead of time and had five bags prepared with couplers in them already, but it wasn't enough. We needed 10 or so tonight! The other couplers were in bags from last week still with royal icing in them, so that was just a joyous time suck to get them out and use those.
I couldn't do the daffodils at all because of the overly stiff frosting preventing me from squeezing out the center bell part, and the teacher was demo'ing the primrose before I could even start the pansy. I did finally manage to do some pansies, some primroses, and some daffodils before class was over, though, once I got my frosting (mostly) working and filled into bags with couplers. I was very frustrated and annoyed and ready to give up, though. I didn't, but I was really having a hard time. I had bits of frosting everywhere, too, including in my hair and on my shirt and all over the towel I was using on the table.
So I finally clean up and pack up and get home, only to find that I have to throw out two trays (flower formers) full of handmade hard earned flowers becuase they were squished in the box from being on top of each other before they had dried enough. The humidity from the freezing rain we're having tonight wasn't helping with that at all and probably was causing difficulty getting the consistency right, as well, but it was still horribly annoying!
I needed to share this here because who else is going to understand how annoying it is when your royal icing isn't the right consistency, you run out of couplers, your hand is hurting from stirring coloring into stiff frosting, when the bags start splitting repeatedly, and those stupid bits of royal icing that get everywhere?!
I had a very hard day in the world of cake decorating. It just sucked! And of course I have to make more flowers for my final cake next week. Sigh.
Thanks for listening, if anyone did..
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