Cake – do with super runny icing

cake

So I was making the icing from a boxed cake, but screwed up a lot. I mistook the icing mix for the cake mix. So I added 2 eggs, I took out the yolk of one of them. I also vastly put in way too much milk. The icing mix needed 15ml of milk. I put in 250ml. I've been trying to fix it by adding corn starch and more icing sugar but it's still insanely runny.

Now I'm left with a bowl of this icing 'stuff'. I don't want to throw it out. Is there a way to fix it? Or is there something I can do with this mixture?

If I can't find something to do with it, I'll probably end up just eating it by itself…

Best Answer

I'm going to ignore the actual icing ingredients for a moment here as I suspect they will be mostly icing sugar and a few neglible other things.

So you now have roughly

  • 1 cup / 250 ml milk
  • 1.5 eggs
  • 6 tblsp / 60g starch and flour
  • a lot of icing sugar

-> The egg means you need a heating step to get that mixture safe.

If we ignore the sugar, we are looking at a basic pudding mix, albeit with somewhat skewed proportions. So some minor adjustments are in order:

  • Add another 1-21 cups of milk, stir well.

Heat slowly on the stove, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.
You'll get some version of pastry cream / pudding. It will probably be somewhat floury and very, very sweet, but at least safe and basically edible.

Once you have the pudding, you can use it as a base for desserts, cake fillings etc., mixing with fruit or stretching it with yogurt could tone down the excessive sweetness.

You can also use the thick pudding for a custard-based buttercream, which means you finally turn your mishap into a frosting again.


1 The math, very rough numbers as I don't have the exact amounts you used:

1 tbsp starch / flour ~ 10 g

For pudding, you'd use 20 g / 2 tbsp per 250 ml / 1 cup.

So if your guestimate is correct, use 3 cups milk in total.

For a somewhat thicker pudding, use 30g / 3 tbsp per 250 ml / 1 cup.