Boiled Flour Icing - can I make ahead?

[jenhen2]

Does anyone know if I can make the boiled flour icing in advance? It's the one where you make the roux with flour and milk and then beat butter with sugar and add the cooled roux. I would like to make it tonight, and refrigerate it, then beat it to fluff it up on Sunday and use it to frost a cake then. Will that work? Thanks!

[jenhen2]

Just in case anyone looks this up, I tried it and it was a disaster! The initial frosting was perfect, then I refrigerated for 4 hours covered. Took it out and hooked the bowl back up to the stand mixer and let her roll. The icing bRoke and looked grainy and gross. It tasted greasy. I beat more but nothing changed so I added a quarter cup of powdered sugar to try to soak up the grease and it worked a little bit, but the overall result was broken, greasy and not at all the light and fluffy original. I would not recommend doing this at all!!!!!

[Cliocooks]

So sorry, I wonder why mine worked and yours didn't? Mine was chocolate-I wonder if that made some mysterious difference.

[jenhen2]

Mine was lemon (lemon extract instead of vanilla) so maybe that was it? Very strange! Just out of curiosity, how long did you beat it before you used it the second time?

[Cliocooks]

I can't remember for sure--it seems to me it did take a while--maybe three minutes or so?

[jenhen2]

Thanks - I definitely beat mine for at least that long. I was just thinking maybe it's one of those things that looks broken until several minutes later and then it all comes together. Anyway, we had the cake yesterday and it was delicious and tasty, it just looked weird and it definitely wasn't the fluffy, creamy icing I was planning on. Oh well....

[Isolda]

I made that frosting for my son's b-day back in January, and then refrigerated the leftover cake with the frosting on it a for a few days. It kept really well.

[jenhen2]

Thanks, I was talking about refrigerating the icing before I put it on the cake. That didn't work so well (per above) but I've done it your way (frosting the cake, then refrigerating it) and it's a much better result. The cake wasn't done before the icing for me this time, so that's my lesson learned. Thanks!

[Cliocooks]

You shouldn't have any problem. I made the boiled flour icing from Cook's Country for my son's birthday. It was good but the recipe made far too much for the cake. I put the extra away for a few days (I think the recipe said you could keep it for a week) and then beat it and used it on another cake. It was fine.

[jenhen2]

Great, thanks!