MakeYourOwn

Purchasing Dixie’s Ready-to-Use Icings saves time and money too. Let’s compare and see!

It’s not the cost per pound that determines the value of the icing, it the VOLUME per pound.....

In Chapter 10 of our video - “Why NOT to Make Your Own Icing”, I am shown making a batch of a popular icing from the following recipe:

1 Cup Shortening

4 Pounds Powdered Sugar

1 Tsp Vanilla Flavoring

1 Tsp Almond Flavoring

1 Tsp Butter Flavoring

3/4 Tsp Salt

1/3 Cup CornStarch

8 oz (1 Cup) Water

These ingredients added together makes one batch of icing weighing just over 5 1/3 pounds (5.35 pounds as shown on the scale in the video).

When the batch of icing is measured, there are 7 1/2 cups of icing.

Truth is, there’s probably not a decorator among us who does not have the story to tell of the time they were rushing to get that special order out and found themselves one small pastry bag short of icing, and had to take the time to make another whole batch of icing...

-which you hate to make icing anyway, and REALLY hate that you have to do it when the cake is supposed to be picked up or delivered right away!

5.35 pounds of Dixie’s Icing yields just about 18 1/2 cups of Icing (18.488), rather than the 7 1/2 cups of the above example! - either Original Almond/Vanilla, Original Recipe Vanilla or Special Recipe Vanilla.

One cup of Dixie’s white icings measure 4.63 ounces, or just about 1/3 pound.

One cup of the sample recipe measures 11.4128 ounces, or almost 3/4 pound!

You would need to make 2 1/2 batches of the sample icing to equal the same 18 1/2 cup volume of icing as Dixie’s and those same 18 1/2 cups of icing from the test recipe will weigh slightly over 13 1/3 pounds!!!

Now, if you are going to ice and decorate a 250 - 300 serving wedding cake, you will need just about 5 gallons or 80 cups of icing. Using the same recipe in our example would require 10 2/3 batches of icing (at 7 1/2 cups per batch) - using a standard 4 1/2 Quart Kitchen Aid Mixer. Your 80 cups of icing weighs slightly over 57 pounds! No wonder those wedding cakes are so heavy to deliver; and no wonder you get those little bulges around the middle of the layers! Dixie’s Icing weighs just 23 pounds for a full 5 gallon (80 cup) pail.

Just as the icing in the example weighed surprisingly more than Dixie’s Icing does, making your own icing also costs far more than one expects - based on volume of icing per dollar spent.

Below are three typical cake decorator icing recipes and the cost evaluation of making enough icing to fill a five gallon pail - . Find a recipe close to your favorite recipe and see just how much you DON’T really save if you make your own! Better yet, if you haven’t already done so, try your recipe in our calculator above.

Cost of Basic Ingredients Used in Icing Recipes

Highlighted figures are amounts used in all recipe calculations.

Go to very bottom of this page to see how these prices were determined.

In making quality decorator icing, some items can be substituted, and others definitely cannot be. Where applicable I averaged in the cost of “house brands”, others only the brand name products would do.

This is how decisions were made:

Shortening - Crisco is usually the preferred product, or some the the high ratio shortenings.

My research shows cost of 3 lbs high ratio fairly similar to or slightly higher than Crisco.

Coffeemate - The recipe I worked with recommended only the “real thing”.

Flavorings - Wilton no-color flavorings usually came in right at or below the average; products are

familiar and readily available across the country.

Meringue Powder - Products vary greatly in ingredient content. Wilton’s is most similar to the

meringue powder used in all Dixie’s Icings. I felt it most appropriate for evaluation.