Grainy Chocolate Icing

Asked by Isabella1991. Answered on 3rd October 2016

Full question

Hi! Today I made Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from Feast and it was delicious. However, the icing was grainy. I definitely used icing sugar and followed the recipe (though I did use maple syrup in place of golden syrup). I was hoping for a tip to fix this problem.

Our answer

Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake (from FEAST) is a chocolate sponge cake that is thicky robed in a rich icing made from melted chocolate, sugar, butter and sour cream. Icing (confectioner's) sugar is powdery and should dissolve fairly easily so we doubt that the sugar is the cause of the graininess.

It is most likely that the melted chocolate has "seized" slightly and probably got a little too hot when it was being melted with the butter. If you are melting the mixture over a saucepan of hot water make sure that the bowl is supended over the water in the pan and that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Also the water does not have to be boiling, only steaming. So when you insert the bowl into the pan it may help also to turn the heat right down. If you are melting the mixture in a microwave then do this in very short 10 to 15 second bursts, and stir between each burst. With both methods it helps to stop heating the mixture while there are still a few small lumps of unmelted chocolate. If you keep stirring the mixture you will find that the chocolate melts in the residual heat and it reduces the risk of the chocolate overheating.