[Sca-cooks] OOP Icing Question

Laura C. Minnick lcm at jeffnet.org
Sun Apr 8 22:24:28 PDT 2007


At 09:47 AM 4/8/2007, you wrote:
>Elizabeth mentioned:
>
><<< Buttercream icing has always worked pretty well for me.  You just
>have to keep the cake out of direct sunlight. >>>
>
>Why do you need to keep this icing out of direct sunlight? Because of
>heat? Or because the sunlight makes it change color? Or something else?
>
>Stefan

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!! OH, the memories that brings back!

Way back in '83, I made my own wedding cake (I was broke and didn't 
know any better than to do it myself.). The reception was being held 
up at Lake Tapps (WA), at the home of some friends. Their kitchen was 
on the back side of the house, and that wall was mostly windows; and 
the deck and walk off the kitchen led right out to the lake. Day 
before the wedding, I went up to set up reception stuff, and frost 
and assemble the cake. It was mid-May, and an unseasonable 85 degrees that day.

Did I mention that there were lots of windows?

I put the cake together and set it on the counter while I got the 
streamers put up on the deck. It was hot, so I took a break to go get 
some lemonade.

And there, on the counter, the tasty buttercream frosting (with real 
butter) had slumped off the sides of the cake and was oozing all over 
the cake plate. And the middle layer was beginning to list.

At some point in the resulting hysteria, I called my mother, who 
drove over with a dozen eggs, some cream of tartar, and some more 
powdered sugar. She sent me home to be hysterical there where she 
couldn't hear me. ;-) And she did something to the cake. I don't know 
what. There were some crumbs in the frosting, but it was mostly 
together the next day.

When I have occasion to need a wedding cake again (dunno when- the 
boy has to finish grad school first), I think I'm going to have 
someone else make it and keep it somewhere cool until it is needed. 
No reason I should go through that twice.

'Lainie
who hates shortening icing. Bleah!
___________________________________________________________________________
"It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than 
our abilities."  -Albus Dumbledore





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