grainy icing

[bjames]

I just made a cream cheese icing with butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar, and thought that it was not sweet enough. Since I had no more powdered sugar, I added some granulated sugar, and now, it has a gritty/grainy texture! If I keep whipping it, will it eventually dissolve? Help!!!

[Free Rider]

The granulated sugar I keep in the house is "Baker's sugar" from C&H. It has evenly sized grains, which make them melt uniformly. If you're ever stuck like that again, take the granulated sugar that you have and process it in the food processor until the grains are very fine. That way they will be able to blend in an environment that is not hot.

[m brown]

If you have time you could melt down the icing, cool and re-whip.

[bluezebra]

Yeah you're stuck with the graininess.

You are making cream cheese icing. As far as I know, you cannot introduce heat to that and expect to get anything other than a mess on your hands.

There are reasons recipes call for a certain type of sugar. It's not usually good to sub out because it isn't a direct substitution.

But as freerider said, you can make homemade powdered sugar. I've never used a food processor but I have used a blender to do it and it worked...ok. Not awesome but enough to sorta work.

Sorry!

[bjames]

Thank you m brown,
I think I will try your suggestion to reheat the icing, cool it and rewhip it. My alternative is to throw it out and start again!

[bjames]

Thank you, bluezebra,
I was going to take m brown's advice about reheating the icing, but, I think you are probably correct about it turning into a mess when reheated!! Thank you anyway for your input...

[momoreg]

I don't know if you've already tried to remedy the icing, but here is what you can do. First, bring it to a cool room temp, then melt down only 30% of the icing in the microwave, or over a water bath. Pour that into the icing, and let it go on the mixer for awhile. It may not remove all the graininess, but it will be 30% better. If you melted it down all the way, you would absolutely end up with a mess.

Let us know how it goes.

[bjames]

momoreg,
Since I had to remedy my situation earlier, I brought the icing to room temperature, which occurred in a very short time, since it is very hot today, and I added, and beat very well, powdered sugar. The result was tolerable, and only slightly grainy, and since the icing was made with cream cheese and butter, it is very delicious. I do, however, thank you for your suggestion and will remember it for the future.