Bath Cupcake frosting help

[farscapeone]

I'm just new to the forum so hope I'm posting this in the right place.

I'm desperately in need of help with my bath cupcake frosting. I'm using the usual recipe of meringue powder, powdered sugar and such like but after a few batches I realised that the meringue powder was very expensive and that I could substitute it for powdered egg whites which were cheaper.

Now I'm having the problem that my powdered egg whites are just turning to hard lumps within my icing!!! Any ideas on why this is happening and how I can fix it?

I live in the UK and find it difficult to get cheap meringue powder so definitely need to use the powdered egg whites to keep costs down.

 

[lsg]

Meringue powder contains additional ingredients beside dried egg white. Meringue powder contains modified food starch, egg whites, sugar, gum arabic, calcium sulfate, citricacid, cream of tartar, silicon dioxide and artificial vanilla flavoring. This may be the reason that plain powdered egg white is not working for you.

 

[farscapeone]

I was aware that they weren't the same but I've seen a lot of people saying that you can use the dried egg white instead and thought maybe it was only me having a problem with it. I'm having a really tough time making a decent frosting that's cost effective.

Can anyone recommend anywhere in the UK where you can get meringue powder for a reasonable price?