Chocolate frosting disaster! Need advise!

[susy]

Hello!!
I am trying to make a chocolate cake and chocolate frosting with no success!
I have tried earth balance for butter replacement, the one with soy (yellow box) and without soy (red box). Cakes taste kid of salty/oily/weird/fishy but if I add a lot of cocoa powder and pure vanilla extract, they can be edible... kind of The major problem I have is with frosting! There is no way earth balance can decently substitute butter. Frosting tastes bad, real bad. I experimented again tonight with both cake and frosting. Cake as usual is oily and salty, frosting is horrible! I refrigerated for a couple of hours and it now even tastes a bit bitter
Definitely not something to serve to any guest!! I made the frosting with half shortening and half earth balance stick, added a lot of powdered sugar, much more than the recipe called for, a lot of pure vanilla extract and adjusted consistency with coconut milk.

I need help!!! what do you normally use for frosting? Do you know of another brand I can try?
Am I doing anything wrong? I cannot use coconut spread as I live in Florida and it will melt before my eyes, here it doesn't keep in solid form at room temperature.

Any help is much appreciated!!
Thank you!!

 

[kgord]

I personally do not. I am glad you posted this because I wanted to try to make frosting with smart balance. It sounds like it is a no go. If I get it into my head to make frosting I think I will use real butter or even stick margarine. I am sorry for your disaster. It doesn't sound like it can be salvaged now...I would say feed it to the dog, but they aren't supposed to have chocolate!

 

[Diane Lane]

My favorite is buttercream, but I don't have any dietary restrictions, and love dairy. What I have done in the past though, especially if the cake is rich enough itself, or has pudding in it, is to simply sift powdered sugar onto the top. If you want to do that, but want it to look a little fancier, you can place a paper doily on top, and sift over that, so the sugar will take the shape of the doily's design. Here's a link so you can see how it's done. You could also use an actual lace doily, but then you'd have to clean it. Another suggestion is you could sift cocoa on top, rather than, or in addition to, the confectioners sugar.

Also, I usually use unsalted butter in frosting, so if you're using a substitute, check to see if it's unsalted, or if you can find an unsalted replacement.