My frosting tastes like envelope?

[Azurix]

So the other day I was baking cupcakes with a friend. We ran out of our can of frosting, so I decided we should make out own frosting since we had the ingredients. The recipe listed for vanilla extract, milk, confectioners powdered sugar, and a few other things. Anyways, it was the typical vanilla frosting recipe that you find anywhere while searching up the terms, "frosting recipe". However, after creating a batch of this frosting, it tasted like envelope! What I mean by this is the part of the envelope that you lick to seal it. Does anyone have any idea as to why it turned out this way? Any comments or opinion are greatly appreciated!

 

[JGPangi]

That certainly is strange. It could be anything really, from the extract to the sugar to the butter. Do you still have the recipe? It would help a lot.

 

[monkeyboots]

Hmm...were any of the ingredients stored near anything strong smelling (other foods or non-foods)?

 

[Becky]

Gosh, that certainly doesn't sound good! I can only think it would be the vanilla extract. Perhaps try a different brand? I use vanilla bean paste instead of extract, it has a really nice flavour and get the little specks of vanilla

 

[Tina Nord]

Gross...was it like the bitter glue on the envelope? My guess is that you had bad ingredient, or maybe did you use a cheap vanilla extract? I always buy the expensive vanilla as it tastes better.

 

[mfg53]

Maybe some ingredients were spoiled. That's the only thing I can think of right now. Even if you put excess of one ingredient you would be able to tell what it was. You definitely want to find out since no one wants to eat cake envelopes

 

[zlemune]

Did you use butter or some vegetable oil based butter-like substitute? Some of those are fine, but I've had ones that tasted very artificial to me.

 

[wander_n_wonder]

I only experienced my frosting tasting like paper (or envelope) as you said when I put way too much food color. It looked really pretty because of the color but the taste was not appealing at all. I think food colors have a component which tend to overpower the sweetness of the frosting.

Eventually, I learned to use natural colors instead of using food color. Let's say I use real strawberry juice if I want to make anything red or pink. Blueberries for anything blue or light blue.