Flour Fail Frosting

Here at our house we're not huge cake fans...unless it's done really really well, and then we love it. When I happen on a recipe that looks like it'll spruce up regular old boring cake I usually stop and take a look. Had I seen this Original Pin, I would've stopped and taken a look, just like Kala did. 

The Original Pin

http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2010/09/frosting-that-will-get-you-hugs-and.html

The original recipe can be found at:
  http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/desserts/thate28099s-the-best-frosting-ie28099ve-ever-had/ 

That looks like Whipped Cream frosting...well it's not. It's a flour frosting! Now that right there sounds a little odd to me...I've never heard of it at all (which doesn't mean it's bad, I'm just saying it surprised me). Looking through the recipe it looks like basically you are making a whipped sweet gravy. I'm incredibly curious now and want to try it out. This is now on my To Test board. The ingredients sound sketchy, but the reviews it has received say it's divine. Kala decided to give this a whirl and things did not go well. 

The Pinstrosity

Kala decided to try out this frosting recipe for some cupcakes her mother made while visiting.  "Needless to say I had high expectations after reading all of the reviews. In the end the final product was kind of a disaster. The flavor was actually quite good,the problem is that it kept 'breaking.' The frosting just kept separating even while it was in the piping bag. I experimented and iced one cupcake but after a few minutes there was some kind of liquid which had separated from the rest of the frosting and started dripping down the sides. Believe me, I waited until the milk/flour mixture had cooled completely and followed all the instructions and pictures word-for-work. But, never once did it resemble whipped cream. I even looked at the original recipe by The Pioneer Woman and hers never looked like whipped cream either. At first I counted exactly 45 seconds (that Pioneer Woman instructs) of whipping once I added the mixtures together, that didn't work. The pin link says "If it's not looking like whipped cream, keep on whipping." So when it didn't work after 45 seconds, I kept whipping and it only got worse... The picture shows that I had to refrigerate the frosting to keep it from melting away and it ended up a horrid, lumpy mess."

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happened. I have a few ideas now without having had time to test this (and Kala may have followed these and it was something else completely...these are just possible ideas from looking at the picture and hearing her story). 

Idea # 1: The dry ingredients didn't get mixed into the wet ingredients all the way. From the original recipe on tastykitchen.com, the instructions say "You don’t want any sugar graininess left."

Idea #2: The original instructions also say "If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough!" 

Idea #3: This recipe was on three sites I looked at (www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com, tastykitchen.com/blog, and tastykitchen.com/recipes) and each of them stressed having the milk/flour mixture all the way cool before you stir in the vanilla and before you add it to the butter/sugar mixture. Now what all the way cool is, I'm not quite sure. Room temperature cool? Refrigerated cool? Perhaps it was the refrigeration that was the problem here. 

Again, since I can't test it right now, I can't give more help on how to fix it yet other than those 3 ideas above. Any knowledge on this out there for Kala?