Royal Icing

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A decorator's single most important recipe to master

Royal icing is your gateway to cake, cookie and pop decoration. It is the basis for many designs, and the detail work that showcase a given design.

Royal icing is versatile; it can be used to outline a design, to create shapes and figures, to colour, to write a message and to illustrate effects such as waves for instance, pearls, embroidery, lace… It is also used as glue to stick decorative pieces, shapes and figures onto a cake, cookie or other decorated foods. Royal icing outlined and smudged in with a brush is a genius way to create the embroidered effect… there are many uses to Royal icing, it is every decorator’s staple tool. If you want to take up cookie or cake decoration, royal icing is one that you have to master.

Read the full article and watch the tutorials on this link.

Ingredients

  • 25g dried egg white powder or whites of 4 medium eggs
  • 1kg icing sugar
  • Squeeze of lemon juice or 1 packet powdered vanilla (or clear liquid vanilla. Do not use brown vanilla essence as it affects the colours of your icing)

If using egg white powder, mix with 150ml water and then pass through a sieve to get rid of any lumps. Ideally let it rest overnight in the fridge. This procedure is called reconstituting the egg whites.

Sift the icing sugar, then place in the bowl of your electric mixer. Add ¾ the meri white mixture or the lightly beaten egg whites and the lemon juice or powdered vanilla. Mix on low speed.

Once all is well combined, check the consistency. If the sides of the bowl still look dry and crumbly, add the rest of the meri white or egg whites until icing looks smooth but not wet.

Beat to the desired consistency (soft or stiff peaks) and it is ready to use.

To Store Royal Icing

Royal icing stiffens and dries out. Therefore, make sure you keep it covered with a cling film, touching the tops, while not in use, then cover the plastic container with a lid to seal.

After a couple of days of setting aside, the icing may split into 2 layers (egg white and dense sugar top). Just place in a bowl making sure no dry bits fall into the mixing bowl, and mix on low speed until soft or stiff peaks are achieved as desired.

Check out my Understanding Royal Icing article on this link, where I answer all your Royal Icing questions.

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