I'm making chocolate buttercream with powdered sugar, whipping cream, vanilla extract, butter extract, salt, and cocoa powder. I think I may have overmixed. It went from thick and creamy to more like a mousse texture that is NOT spreadable. Is there a way to save it? I'm frosting a cake NOW for a work event tomorrow and can't start over! PLEASE HELP!

throw a blob of it on your clean counter. Smear it back and forth with a spatula. That will take out the excess air. Called "paddling."

MY HERO! I will try that now. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

When I finish "paddling", do I rewhip it or just spread onto cake?

It's still kinda blobby. When I paddle it, it seems like it just spreads, like the moisture is pulling away from it. Not spreadable. Am I just not doing it long enough? I'm going to keep going while I wait for reply that will hopefully come. THANKS!

I think it's more an issue of liquid added. I tried paddling, and the excess liquid is sinking to the bottom of the counter. I think it I tried to put this on cake, the moisture would make the cake soggy. Sigh. I guess back to the store and start from scratch (because I don't currently have ingredients to start over). Why oh why did I ever decide to tackle this project???

Thanks for advice...and listening to vent.

Um, where's the butter or shortening in that recipe? Using those ingredients all you'd ever get is chocolate whipped cream (which is pretty much what you described).

How much whipping cream is in your icing recipe? Did you whip it so much the cream separated? (Does it look a bit granulated?) If so you may have ruined it....

GOOD CATCH prterrel - there's virtually no fat in that recipe. It will never work. If you haven't started over yet, Put in one cup of fat per one pound of sugar.

Sounds to me like you have overwhipped the cream and caused the butterfat to separate - effectively you have made your own cocoa flavoured butter.

I do not know of any way to rectify that so would caution of wasting any other ingredients on it. I would recomment you throw it out and start again with a butter or shortening based recipe.

I'm sorry. Today was a VERY long long long day. I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant, a full time teacher, ran 3 miles today, and then came home and caked for about 5 hours. I was exhausted when I was posting.

I did have butter in the recipe. I forgot to mention that in my list of ingredients. I think I did overbeat it. It was like the liquid was separating and squishing out. It was originally too thick to spread, so I was adding more liquid (cream and milk) to thin it out, but I must've just overbeat it. It was a texture like I've never seen.


I tossed it, drove to store to buy more ingredients, and then started over. So thankful it's done.

And so thankful for all of you for replying to my URGENT posts. The awesome experience of CC comes through yet again. I mean it - I really appreciate your time and help with this.