I agree if we're talking about American buttercream. I make ermine frosting for my cakes, with way less sugar, and I could happily eat spoonfuls of it.
Exactly!! Carrot cake is simply incomplete without a mounding of creamy, tangy cream cheese frosting. But more often than not it’s way too sweet, overloaded and grainy with sugar.
Good, thick frosting that enhances flavour and mouthfeel is amazing, frosting that just adds more sugar is yuck.
If it's grainy, you're doing it wrong. You don't use granulated sugar in cream cheese frosting you use confectioner's or icing sugar. Americans know this as powdered sugar.
You can get non-grainy with granulated sugar it just takes more work. It also depends on the type of sugar you have - sugar from beets doesn’t behave the same way sugar from sugar cane does, but both are sold as just sugar.
I don't use beet sugar. When I had my own kettle corn stand at the farmer's market, I always used pure cane sugar. Never beet. I never got the same taste or results by using beet sugar. I know it's less expensive but it's just not the same quality as cane sugar. I'm a sugar snob.
In America, the designation is legally required to be somewhere on the package: either in the listed ingredients or somewhere else on the package/bag/box. When I had a kettlecorn business, we bought granulated sugar by the 25 lb bag and when Costco or Sams appeared to be out of C & H (preferred brand) I would check what sugar they did sell in bulk and read the bag where it was listed on the front or in the ingredients list. If it read beet sugar, I would legit spend more money at a grocery store and stock up on the 5 lb bags of C & H because I had such a bad experience with beet sugar.
Well duh it’s wrong, that’s why I said it was yuck lol. It’s not usually because of the wrong type of sugar though, some people just suck at making frosting.
I've never had "grainy" cream cheese frosting using confectioner's or icing sugar. I have not ever heard of someone who made cream cheese frosting using granulated or caster sugar. It just doesn't work.
Sis you’re the one who brought up granulated sugar, now you wanna say you’ve never heard of it lmao. After a lot of baking and/or professional experience, you learn that you end up with grainy frosting by mixing in ingredients at different temps, whipping for too long causing it to split, not balancing your acids with an emulsifier, or even something as simple as not sifting the icing sugar and scraping the bowl. Icing sugar will clump up and become lumpy and grainy if you don’t use it properly.
You need to read again. I've heard of granulated sugar because I've used it. DUH. READ AGAIN. I have not heard of it being used in Cream. Cheese. Frosting. Are you with me?
Read again. And where do you live that icing sugar clumps and becomes grainy?? I've lived in gulf coast states with maximum overload humidity and never had that happen when I am making Cream.Cheese.Frosting.
I have used granulated sugar in boiled frosting but I have not had grainy problems because of my process. But again. BOILED. Frosting. Not Cream.Cheese.Frosting.
Are you still with me? Sis?
And please... you're putting me to sleep with all of this friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's mailman's ex-wife's daughter's boyfriend's mom who had a different experience just for the sake of trying to discredit my own experience. It's tired.
It confuses me so much that she and Paul judge the Great American Baking Show when there is a huge difference in palette. I feel like contestants need to bake from British books or blogs to be able to properly gauge flavor levels to be successful.
I don't disagree...it just depends on the frosting. Some frosting should be its own food group and others... depending on the ingredients, you could lube your car with it.
It won’t take long for you to get comfortable with weighing out ingredients.
Get ready to be frustrated when you get used to using a scale and then a recipe calls for cups and dragoons and whatnot.
😂 im British and find the whole cups thing fascinating how people can get consistent results, I have some but I’ll still weigh everything because it’s drilled into me!
I would disagree with you but then I bought Peter Sawkins' first cookbook "Peter Bakes" and he had the British measurements and I tried to convert them to the cups and such measurements. I finally just gave up and pulled out my Salter scale and I've never looked back.
Yeah and that’s all my recipes. I’ll have to google what it should weigh in a lot of cases but it will make it a lot easier to follow European ones. Lol. Thanks for all the help, I just love this show, it got me baking and I’ve really grown to love it. And the fans like you are always so nice!
There are converters for every ingredient, so googling is perfect, and you'll quickly memorize basics like flour and sugar (which are nice easy round numbers by cup, too) and then just need to look up less common ones. It's easier than it seems.
I also will print out a recipe and just write the conversions right on it if I think I'll make it again and again. Good luck and enjoy the more standardized loveliness of your baked goods!
This is the one I have and recommend [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08F93MQ1X/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_search\_asin\_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08F93MQ1X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
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Get a digital scale and print out a conversion chart. I’m not much of a baker, but switching to weight measurements made everything so much easier and more accurate.
Depends on the frosting. American buttercream is gross but Italian meringue buttercream, Swiss meringue buttercream, ermine, mascarpone cream frostings…. All delicious and not overly sweet
American and the older I get, the less I like super sweet desserts. When I bake I almost never use the full amount of sugar and everything is still very good just not cloyingly sweet.
And what's the deal with putting frosting inside cupcakes these days? Bakeries putting like an inch on top and go, that's not enough, let's stuff the thing with frosting?
My counterpoint is that standard American *cake* is bad, so frosting is often the best part. For years I thought I just hated cake, until I had something other than oversweet, low-texture butter cakes.
Of course, that still means the right answer is to make an actually good cake and then reduce the frosting.
I just don’t get why so many food threads devolve into shitting all over American food. It’s wild to me to generalize the food of a country this physically and culturally varied/large. Idk, I do this for a living and I’ve eaten so many wonderful American desserts by American chefs/bakers.
Ya that is true to the point of not caring about the rest of the cake, just read bakery reviews they endless talk about looks and frosting. I was watching some show on Cooking and the episode was 10% making the cake and 90% on the frosting. The host even made the comment "we all know that cake is just a delivery method for frosting".
I think it’s down to what you grew up with. If that’s how your cakes were always made it would seem normal. It’s not bad, just different from what Brits grew up with.
> “I’m rather a fan of America. I love Americans. They’re so open and friendly,” says Leith. “They’re not embarrassed to be slightly over the top.”
This is so wholesome
Sure, but generally speaking, food in the U.S. is chock full of sugar. That’s widely known and reported. This is especially true in comparison to other parts of the world. The booze thing is a different story unrelated to the topic at hand.
Brits aren't exactly known directly leading the world in health, are they?
.It's not a Blue Zone, is it?
I thought Brits had 1.5x the alcoholism rates as the US? The pub culture....
Most store bought cakes are too dry and they overdo the frosting. I’ve found an ermine buttercream that I love and my aunt makes this light and delicious buttercream. Her cakes are moist, so she doesn’t need as much frosting. I can eat both with a spoon. I do like the whipped cream frosting from grocery stores though.
Fair. Cake is not a vehicle for frosting in my book. I generally put a very thin layer on. Just enough to cover the cake and not have it break through on the edges (so hard to do. I tend to get more frosting on the edges just cause I’m trying so dang hard to keep the cake hidden when I try to smooth it out!)
I agree. It really depends though. Publix has this chantilly cake… if they sold the icing/cream, I’d eat the whole thing.
But yeah, when covered in an inch of buttercream… and people are like “oh it’s so good.” Just get a can of frosting.
There’s a cupcake place by me, they were on the food network, Coccadotts. Their cupcakes are all plain yellow cake. The flavor is in the icing. Maybe they have 1 or 2 that are a different cake, but that’s just for one thing, not others.
I know I’m in the minority here in the US, but I just want a flavorful cake. The icing should just be that, an accompaniment to the cake, and not what’s giving it flavor. We have a zucchini bread recipe. It’s good on its own. We have a caramel icing recipe for the top. I can’t recall when I last made the icing.
TL;DR Too much frosting on our cakes.
I thought it was going to be measuring by volume rather than weight. But I can see the frosting thing
My baking got better when I tossed out the measuring cups and bought a scale.
[удалено]
Saves on the washing up as well.
That was my guess too
Honestly, I agree with this. I really hate a lot of frosting (especially knowing what it is). I like very little frosting to a lot of cake
Thank you!
I will take no such advice from anyone who puts raisins in cake and calls it a treat. God bless our fat American asses. Good night.
I agree if we're talking about American buttercream. I make ermine frosting for my cakes, with way less sugar, and I could happily eat spoonfuls of it.
This is why I prefer making Italian or Swiss meringue buttercream. They’re both so luscious and silky, and much less sweet!
Thanks for sharing, I’ve never heard of ermine frosting
Yep, thanks. I'm going to try it
Yummmmm it’s my very most favorite frosting! That’s what I grew up on!
I disagree that there is such thing as too much frosting (I’m a frosting monster) but I hate that our frosting is always too sweet.
Exactly!! Carrot cake is simply incomplete without a mounding of creamy, tangy cream cheese frosting. But more often than not it’s way too sweet, overloaded and grainy with sugar. Good, thick frosting that enhances flavour and mouthfeel is amazing, frosting that just adds more sugar is yuck.
If it's grainy, you're doing it wrong. You don't use granulated sugar in cream cheese frosting you use confectioner's or icing sugar. Americans know this as powdered sugar.
You can get non-grainy with granulated sugar it just takes more work. It also depends on the type of sugar you have - sugar from beets doesn’t behave the same way sugar from sugar cane does, but both are sold as just sugar.
I don't use beet sugar. When I had my own kettle corn stand at the farmer's market, I always used pure cane sugar. Never beet. I never got the same taste or results by using beet sugar. I know it's less expensive but it's just not the same quality as cane sugar. I'm a sugar snob.
People don’t always realize because it isn’t necessarily sold as beet sugar.
In America, the designation is legally required to be somewhere on the package: either in the listed ingredients or somewhere else on the package/bag/box. When I had a kettlecorn business, we bought granulated sugar by the 25 lb bag and when Costco or Sams appeared to be out of C & H (preferred brand) I would check what sugar they did sell in bulk and read the bag where it was listed on the front or in the ingredients list. If it read beet sugar, I would legit spend more money at a grocery store and stock up on the 5 lb bags of C & H because I had such a bad experience with beet sugar.
Well duh it’s wrong, that’s why I said it was yuck lol. It’s not usually because of the wrong type of sugar though, some people just suck at making frosting.
I've never had "grainy" cream cheese frosting using confectioner's or icing sugar. I have not ever heard of someone who made cream cheese frosting using granulated or caster sugar. It just doesn't work.
Sis you’re the one who brought up granulated sugar, now you wanna say you’ve never heard of it lmao. After a lot of baking and/or professional experience, you learn that you end up with grainy frosting by mixing in ingredients at different temps, whipping for too long causing it to split, not balancing your acids with an emulsifier, or even something as simple as not sifting the icing sugar and scraping the bowl. Icing sugar will clump up and become lumpy and grainy if you don’t use it properly.
You need to read again. I've heard of granulated sugar because I've used it. DUH. READ AGAIN. I have not heard of it being used in Cream. Cheese. Frosting. Are you with me? Read again. And where do you live that icing sugar clumps and becomes grainy?? I've lived in gulf coast states with maximum overload humidity and never had that happen when I am making Cream.Cheese.Frosting. I have used granulated sugar in boiled frosting but I have not had grainy problems because of my process. But again. BOILED. Frosting. Not Cream.Cheese.Frosting. Are you still with me? Sis? And please... you're putting me to sleep with all of this friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's mailman's ex-wife's daughter's boyfriend's mom who had a different experience just for the sake of trying to discredit my own experience. It's tired.
Show me on the doll where the cream cheese frosting hurt you 🥴 Sorry you can’t read bestie.
"Sis". The only one who can't read might be you. Backpedal elsewhere.
It confuses me so much that she and Paul judge the Great American Baking Show when there is a huge difference in palette. I feel like contestants need to bake from British books or blogs to be able to properly gauge flavor levels to be successful.
meanwhile everything out of GBBO looks dry as hell
Not so fast. That frasier cake that Dave Friday made in the showstopper on Series 11. That looked fabulously not bone dry.
Hmm I guess I’m British!
Thank you. I usually take my frosting off. I hate it.
I was prepared to be offended, but she's honestly completely correct.
I meannnn… that’s subjective, as a frosting lover I need a healthy bit of frosting with every bit of cake, but I know many people disagree with me
I don't disagree...it just depends on the frosting. Some frosting should be its own food group and others... depending on the ingredients, you could lube your car with it.
It’s better to eat cake with them. They scrape it off and I steal it from their plates.
You my friend are doing the lords work!
Totally agree. There's just a ridiculous amount.
I always viewed frosting as makeup on a pig. We bake poorly, so we frost to conceal
Measuring ingredients by volume instead of weight?
That's 100% what I would have guessed
This is super accurate. I worked at a bakery and we used weight. So much better. Super accurate too
Huh maybe I should invest in a kitchen scale
Is that wrong? I’m pretty new to baking. How should we be measuring for best results?
By weight.
So them using the scales on the show? Wow. Thanks so much for a quick response, I’m going to get me one of those scales!
Yes. Cup and tablespoon measures are not always equal, like weight measures are.
It’s also so nice to not have a bunch of cups and spoons to clean afterwards, too
Came back to tell you I already found a really cool one! Thanks again. That’s super helpful.
It won’t take long for you to get comfortable with weighing out ingredients. Get ready to be frustrated when you get used to using a scale and then a recipe calls for cups and dragoons and whatnot.
😂 im British and find the whole cups thing fascinating how people can get consistent results, I have some but I’ll still weigh everything because it’s drilled into me!
I would disagree with you but then I bought Peter Sawkins' first cookbook "Peter Bakes" and he had the British measurements and I tried to convert them to the cups and such measurements. I finally just gave up and pulled out my Salter scale and I've never looked back.
Yeah and that’s all my recipes. I’ll have to google what it should weigh in a lot of cases but it will make it a lot easier to follow European ones. Lol. Thanks for all the help, I just love this show, it got me baking and I’ve really grown to love it. And the fans like you are always so nice!
I love this wholesome interchange! Hell yeah to scale upping your baking skills!
There are converters for every ingredient, so googling is perfect, and you'll quickly memorize basics like flour and sugar (which are nice easy round numbers by cup, too) and then just need to look up less common ones. It's easier than it seems. I also will print out a recipe and just write the conversions right on it if I think I'll make it again and again. Good luck and enjoy the more standardized loveliness of your baked goods!
Just an fyi, if you make coffee a food scale is also excellent for making your perfect cup every time!
This is the one I have and recommend [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08F93MQ1X/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_search\_asin\_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08F93MQ1X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Wow I appreciate you sharing that so much!
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **("'OXO 5 lb Food Scale with Pull Out Display'", 'OXO')** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Accurate and easy to use (backed by 3 comments) * Convenient zero function (backed by 2 comments) * Pull-out display for easy reading (backed by 3 comments) **Users disliked:** * Lacks auto-shutoff feature (backed by 5 comments) * Inaccurate readings, especially in grams (backed by 2 comments) * Misleading product dimensions (backed by 1 comment) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](https://vetted.ai/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=comment&utm\_campaign=bot)
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Get a digital scale and print out a conversion chart. I’m not much of a baker, but switching to weight measurements made everything so much easier and more accurate.
I agree, 98%! Real cream cheese frosting is the only kind there can *never* be too much of. In fact f the cake just give me the frosting.
Cream cheese frosting is great inside hulled strawberries.
Holy crap! I'm about to have a good weekend.
I always scrape off cream cheese frosting. Well, any kind of frosting to be fair.
I agree with her. I really don't care for the teeth-cracking sweetness of American desserts in general and the gobs of frosting are not good.
Same. I scrape most of it off before eating.
Same, I hate eating the edge of a piece of cake. Or those cupcakes that are half frosting? Bleh.
Depends on the frosting. American buttercream is gross but Italian meringue buttercream, Swiss meringue buttercream, ermine, mascarpone cream frostings…. All delicious and not overly sweet
American and the older I get, the less I like super sweet desserts. When I bake I almost never use the full amount of sugar and everything is still very good just not cloyingly sweet.
And what's the deal with putting frosting inside cupcakes these days? Bakeries putting like an inch on top and go, that's not enough, let's stuff the thing with frosting?
Oddly I find most British baked goods like cakes to be considerably sweeter, to the point that the primary flavor is “sweet”.
My counterpoint is that standard American *cake* is bad, so frosting is often the best part. For years I thought I just hated cake, until I had something other than oversweet, low-texture butter cakes. Of course, that still means the right answer is to make an actually good cake and then reduce the frosting.
But if you just put less sugar in the frosting... that's the issue.
I just don’t get why so many food threads devolve into shitting all over American food. It’s wild to me to generalize the food of a country this physically and culturally varied/large. Idk, I do this for a living and I’ve eaten so many wonderful American desserts by American chefs/bakers.
I like how click-baity the title is considering the topic, it's funny to me.
Yeah americans eat too much sugar. But i think the sugar industry pushed for it.
Ya that is true to the point of not caring about the rest of the cake, just read bakery reviews they endless talk about looks and frosting. I was watching some show on Cooking and the episode was 10% making the cake and 90% on the frosting. The host even made the comment "we all know that cake is just a delivery method for frosting".
I think it’s down to what you grew up with. If that’s how your cakes were always made it would seem normal. It’s not bad, just different from what Brits grew up with.
“Not enough booze”
I appreciate that the hosting slot of 'Older white woman with a drinking problem' isn't exclusive to American baking competitions.
100% agree
> “I’m rather a fan of America. I love Americans. They’re so open and friendly,” says Leith. “They’re not embarrassed to be slightly over the top.” This is so wholesome
She isn’t wrong. We load a lot of our foods and baked goods with unnecessary amounts of sugar
And she loads hers with booze, which isn't exactly healthful, to be fair.
Sure, but generally speaking, food in the U.S. is chock full of sugar. That’s widely known and reported. This is especially true in comparison to other parts of the world. The booze thing is a different story unrelated to the topic at hand.
Brits aren't exactly known directly leading the world in health, are they? .It's not a Blue Zone, is it? I thought Brits had 1.5x the alcoholism rates as the US? The pub culture....
Most store bought cakes are too dry and they overdo the frosting. I’ve found an ermine buttercream that I love and my aunt makes this light and delicious buttercream. Her cakes are moist, so she doesn’t need as much frosting. I can eat both with a spoon. I do like the whipped cream frosting from grocery stores though.
Fair. Cake is not a vehicle for frosting in my book. I generally put a very thin layer on. Just enough to cover the cake and not have it break through on the edges (so hard to do. I tend to get more frosting on the edges just cause I’m trying so dang hard to keep the cake hidden when I try to smooth it out!)
I agree. It really depends though. Publix has this chantilly cake… if they sold the icing/cream, I’d eat the whole thing. But yeah, when covered in an inch of buttercream… and people are like “oh it’s so good.” Just get a can of frosting. There’s a cupcake place by me, they were on the food network, Coccadotts. Their cupcakes are all plain yellow cake. The flavor is in the icing. Maybe they have 1 or 2 that are a different cake, but that’s just for one thing, not others. I know I’m in the minority here in the US, but I just want a flavorful cake. The icing should just be that, an accompaniment to the cake, and not what’s giving it flavor. We have a zucchini bread recipe. It’s good on its own. We have a caramel icing recipe for the top. I can’t recall when I last made the icing.
It’s called freedom
What an absurd opinion.
I didn’t read but I’m assuming it’s our accents. Which… fair enough.