Hi,

New to baking and have a quick question on glaze and icing? When looking at a baked product,for instant a bundt cake how do you refer to the topping: is it a glaze or a icing. If its thin coating i would say its a glaze, but seen ones with a thicker glaze which i would consider icing and they refer to it as a glaze too? I thought icing is thicker than glaze, how do you know what term to use?  How do you distinguish between them?

Mumu

MuMu:
  Good morning & welcome to the baking forum. Your interpration of icing & glazes are correct. Simply put Glazes are thin transparent coatings that give a shine to a baked product & also will provide protection from drying out.

  Icings generally speaking contribute flavor, positive appearance &  help preserve keeping qualities as well as protection around the cake.
  As you know there about 5 or 6 type of icings used in baked products. Glazes are much simpler to do & use & apply.
  I hope this info will help you decide which coating to employ to your baked product.
Have a nice day.

~FRESHKID.

Agreed.  The terms are used interchangebly by some, which can be confusing.

thank you so much for your quick reply and help on this. Being a newbie in baking i just like to get things straight,so when i am talking about something or mentioning to someone else i say the proper wording. Very pleased with this web site ,had been else where and even paid for the site and never got such quick response or reliable help .

Thanks Again,

Mumu

I was just talking to a baker and now, I am totally confused. Can any one help on this , The baker told me when i asked her if you make icing and thin it out you have a glaze ,her reply was no. Asked her to explain and she said something about icing you cant make a glaze out of, icing has butter ,flavoring etc. and a glaze is just powder sugar and water or milk thing.I said but whats the stuff people put on bundt cakes that recipes say its a glaze and she said i can just tell you what i was told.So i said then am i wrong to think if you have a icing recipe and if i thinned it i would have a glaze,she said they both have different ingr. to make each one different.Any help on this because i always thought if you thin icing out you would have a glaze. If not i need some help with this.

Thanks,
Mumu

Reminds me of the time a trained chef told me mashed potatoes could only include white pepper, not black… and that scrambled eggs could only be made with water, not milk or other dairy products.  These were obviously his personal preferences, and not the rule!

Don’t be so worried about glaze vs icing vs buttercream…. no one else has it straight either.  Bake yourself a nice bunt cake, top it with whatever you like, and call it George .

Happy day.

MUMU:
  Good morning. What your friend mentioned to you is correct. If you wish to make a glaze for your bundt cake it is very easy. If you have a recipe follow it. If not post back & I or many other forum members will gift you with whichever glaze recipe you need.
Most are just conf. sugar, milk, some vanilla (Flavoring) Agitated & applied when the baked product is cooled.
I hope this info will help you complete your baking project. Have a nice day.

  ~FRESHKID.

FreshKid.

Am I half right on the fact if you want a glaze you can thin out your icing to make the glaze?

Mumu

MUMU:
  Hello again. I do not believe that if you already have ” ICING” made or left over from another use, that you can thin it out & apply it as glaze efficiently. Just my opinion. It isn’t going to look or taste the way it should.
  Good day my friend.

  ~FRESHKID.

I have a recipe that has you make the icing to frost the cake and then it says to glaze with the remaining icing.It says to make glaze take remaining cup of icing and thin. Glaze should be thinner than icing but not runny.
Would like to know if this right before i make this cake?

Mumu

MUMU:
The only way you will ever know if this excercise will work for your cake is to do the recipe. Let us know exactly what & how you performed the thinning aspect of the icing & transformed it into a glaze. I am sure you will be succeesful. Let us know of the results. Till then enjoy the rest of the day.

  ~FRESHKID.

It depends on the recipe for the icing/frosting/glaze!

I don’t think a buttercream frosting (the kind where the main ingredients are butter and sugar, sometimes thickened with egg) would thin out well to make a glaze. I should think the glaze would be kind of greasy.

Ganaches are frequently used as frostings, fillings and glazes - and also chocolate truffle candies. A ganache is basically chocolate and cream, sometimes with a bit of butter and/or corn syrup and/or flavoring added. The “classic” proportion for ganache is 1 oz. of chocolate to 1 fluid oz. (2 Tablespons) of heavy cream, but they can quite easily be made thicker or thinner by adjusting the proportions of cream to chocolate.

So if your recipe is a ganache, it should work just fine! Thin the frosting with a bit of cream, and make sure the glaze is not so cold that it solidifies. (Having a pan of cold water and another of warm water on hand is very helpful when dealing with frostings, icings and glazes. Good for adjusting the temperature.)

There are lots of other sorts of recipes out there too. I’m just a beginning cake baker, and so far I have only made buttercream and ganache. Let us know what the recipe is, and I’m sure someone will have experience with it!

could you use a frosting in a betty crocker tub or ducan hines tub to thin to make a glaze? Has any one else tried this to make a glaze?

Thanks,
Mumu

I wouldn’t suggest you use the canned frostings mentioned… they taste terrible compared to a really nice homemade recipe.  If you must use them however, you can gently heat them up in the microwave to make them thinner and more spreadable/pourable.  If you do this, the frosting will probably remain soft after it cools.

MuMu - I would truly recommend you make a homemade glaze instead of using tub frostings. It takes little time or effort to make a good homemade glaze and the flavor is eons better than the commercial stuff (which has an awful chemical taste, imo). You can often fool a lot of people with a well-doctored cake mix, but there is no disguising the taste of canned frosting.