Chocolate Mocha frosting...failure every time

[ally79]

My grandmother had a great recipe for a chocolate mocha cake with chocolate mocha frosting. The frosting calls for about 1 cup of hot coffee to be added to it, and I have a feeling that this is where I am messing up. The icing always turns out like liquid, and when my grandmother made it it was like buttercream frosting. Any tips?

 

[chefjon]

What are the other ingredients in this? If it's butter, you are definitely melting the butter. You want a good emulsification of butter and coffee. I would use coffee powder as a good sub for coffee.

 

[Tina Nord]

That International delights coffee powder would probably work well. I am going to agree with Chefjon, the hot coffee and butter mixture is probably the issue here. Have you tried making the frosting with cold coffee? Maybe your grandma made a mistake saying that the frosting coffee was supposed to hot. I have made cake batters that have called for hot liquids in the past, but not frosting mixes.

 

[ally79]

The frosting recipe does call for butter, so I am going to take you r advice and try it with cold coffee instead. This cake and frosting is my dad's favorite thing that my grandmother ever made, so it would be a real treat if I could get it to work for Thanksgiving!

 

[JessiFox]

Hmm...I haven't tried mocha frosting in my own recipes before, but I'm glad to see these suggestions to give me a head start in what to do wand what to avoid doing. I hope the suggestions allow you to fix the recipe after all

 

[DancingLady]

Try chilling the coffee. I would not recommend using instant coffee because it does not have the good flavor of coffee brewed with good beans. Just save a cup of good coffee in the fridge and it should be a good temperature for the frosting within an hour or so.

 

[ally79]

I let the coffee cool down in the refrigerator first and it worked absolutely perfectly! The whole family was impressed that I was able to pull it off just like my grandmother used to make it.

 

[ChesterV]

If your granny did make it with hot coffee, then she probably added it after she creamed everything else together, and gradually added the coffee to the creamed mixture while whipping it.

There is a similar French frosting that calls for hot liquid added to it, but you do it very gradually after the other ingredients have been creamed.

It's one of those types of frostings that you have to experiment with to get it right.

If your frostings ever get too hot, you can put them into the fridge until they are cooled off, then stir them up by hand.