*my royal icing recipe is available for purchase as a digital download in my shop. Go to my "shop" link up above!
In its final beaten form royal icing is a thing of beauty. Thick, fluffy, sweet, and very marshmallow-like in appearance. You'll be tempted to want to lick the beaters, but be forewarned, this. stuff. is.very. sweet! Not that sweet is a bad thing, as I can handle a small dab of the icing to test it, but not much beyond a "dab" or I get sick. Especially if you are making many batches of this stuff, then yes, small dabs are just fine.
But it's beautiful stuff. I have to admit, It's like playing with a white fluffy cloud (if we could play with clouds). It's part of what I love about making sugar cookies. There is something so addictive about working with royal icing. Once you make it from scratch (and it is so easy peasy) you've got part of the battle sugar cookies won. I will create a link that will allow you to purchase for a small fee my royal icing recipe. It's a cute printable PDF download that you can save to any device or print and store away.
Royal icing is pretty amazing because it starts off this big billowy mass of fluff, but as you add water to it, it thins out creating different mediums, so to speak, to create masterpieces with. If you want a flat finished look, you would want a thin flood like consistency. If you want a cookie to have some writing or outlining, you go for a thicker piping consistency. And if you want to create beautiful flowers or leaves or other elaborate designs, you probably will go with a stiff consistency.
You see, its the SAME icing, you are just adding water to take it to a certain consistency. Obviously if you want it thin for flooding, you would want far more water in it than you would for piping consistency. You aren't adding anything NEW to the icing to make it into these different consistencies. Just the magic of water and royal icing mixed together.
Many people live and breathe by a certain count when they work with royal icing. You may hear of 20 second icing, 10 second icing, 4 second icing. What that means is, when you take a spoonful of the icing and plop it back into the bowl, however long it takes for it to disappear back into the remaining icing is what the count would be. So if you drop a spoonful and it takes 13 seconds to disappear--then you have 13 second icing. I did my icing this way in the beginning religiously because I didn't know any other way. It has its pros and cons. Pro-it taught me a lot about icing and consistencies and what to look for. Con-it is very very time consuming. I finally got to the point that I know what consistencies to work with without counting. That doesn't mean I don't ever count. I still will do the "drop" test often just to make sure I'm being consistent with my consistencies (that's a mouthful!)
When you are starting out learning how to make these cookies, be patient. Royal icing, like baking, is finicky. It is affected by climate, weather, the baker's temperament! I had so many boo-boo cookies in the beginning I thought I would never get that polished clean look of a sugar cookie you find on pinterest. I one time made cookies with icing that just never ever seemed to dry. Like 2 days later and they were still wet, and mud like. It doesn't take a pro to figure out that obviously something was wrong with my recipe. Or with the way that I had thinned it. I can't remember, but the cookies were a hot mess.
Then there were times that I got a little "flood happy" and put the pedal to the metal and flooded my cookies like I was being timed for swim laps in the Olympics. Picture an ice cream cone on a hot sunny day when you don't eat it fast enough and you're holding it in your hand. Except the cone is a cookie. And the ice cream is the disastrous royal icing that is now dripping everywhere! Why? When I am working with a space no bigger than maybe 3' am I going full "squeezebox" on my piping bag when I am flooding!?" I have no business using that much aggression when flooding. People. Do yourself a favor. 1-don't make your icing SO darn runny that it has a similar viscocity to that of water. It should have a little falling resistance. 2-don't squeeze the piping bag with the same might and fierceness like you're holding the hammer at the "whack-a-mole" at the town carnival. Not necessary. and 3-if you want to move a little faster-just use a larger piping tip with a larger opening or cut a slightly bigger hole in your disposable bag. Duh! (that's on me, not you!)
But it's kind of like when you get behind the wheel of a new car for the first time. Don't you just want to open her up and drive freely? No stop and go! It's the same (in my opinion) with flooding. I love when you get that big open space to fill freely, so I tend to (at least in the beginning) get a little excited at the flooding part. I'm much better now!
There are countless more tips to be shared on this topic. But this already turned out to be way longer than I anticipated. I'll leave you with this one important tip.
Some people like to use one consistency for flooding and piping the border. I sometimes do that. Depends on how busy I am. But I prefer to use a stiffer consistency for my outlines, outline all of my cookies, then go in with a 4-5 second icing to flood. You move fast, without hiccups, and you end up with clean edges. The stiffer consistency outline can stand up to the thin flooding. And thin flooding makes you move faster through a lot of cookies. And when you are looking at 10 sheet pans filled with naked cookies, fast is the name of the game! At least, this is my comfort zone and I always yield reliable, consistent results this way. So I like a thick border, and a thin flood (to flood my cookies). That's it in a nutshell.
Take me to the Royal Icing Recipe
#royalicing#icing#cookies
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