Royal Icing: Tips & Techniques

[Ms. Meliss]

I used to order the meringue powder from CK Products (Country Kitchen) before I was able to buy it commercially.  I preferred it to Wilton b/c you can buy it in larger quantities.  I hate tiny jars b/c I always run out halfway through a recipe.  The big 1# bag was my fave.

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Will give this a try also! I too get frustrated with the little tins. I'm kind of in that inbetween stage. Use quite a bit but not quite enough to order massive quantities...not to mention I have absolutely no storage space!

[JFLinLA]

Is it possible to get metallic colors in royal icing? Specifically, at this time, I'd like to do silver.

Tell me how.

Thanks.

[Wendy DeBord]

Yes, you can paint on metalic colors.........they look fabulous. You don't mix the coloring into the frosting. You let the frosting dry then apply the metalic 'dusts' (edible dusts) on top of the icing.

Sometimes I mix my dusts with alchol and sometimes I prefer to dust them on dry. If they are painted on wet, the color will be smudge proof. If you dust them on they can be smudged.

If you apply it wet, you can't cover a large surface area evenly in tone, best to use it dry for large areas. Also it's hard to use a stencil with a wet application because it wants to bleed under your stencil. Plus you need to be careful not to have your brush too wet or that can melt down your frosting.

I get my dusts thru wholesale sources but theres alot of cake decorating sites on the web that sell them. I know http://www.sugarcraft.com stocks them.

[JFLinLA]

Thanks Wendy. I don't have experience with the metallic dusts. I was going to PM you with my questions, but in case others would have similar questions . . .

This is how I was planning to decorate the torah-shaped cut-out cookies I am preparing for my daughters Bat Mitzvah (there's a whole other thread on that). When I did this 3 years ago, each cookie had 2 colors of royal -- one around the outside, and one in the middle in the shape of a Hebrew letter (in my daughter's case it will be a "shin"). This time, silver is creeping into our decorating colors which is why I'm thinking about this. I haven't yet decided whether I will just make enough cookies as party favors for only the kids (about 75) or for everyone (about 150). Knowing that, here are my questions:

1. I've seen there are a variety of dusts -- luster dust, pearl dust, others. Would you particularly recommend one kind over another?

2. Do I tint the icing the underlying color I want and paint over or do I do white and then paint over with the color I want?

3. I haven't baked the cookies yet. Right now, I'm getting a lot of dough made and chilled. I'll bake in a few days and then freeze the cookies to decorate the week right before the big event. Here's how I did it 3 years ago, let me know what you think. When I rolled and cut the cookies, I had prepared a stencil in the shape of the Hebrew letter I was using. Before baking, I used the stencil to lightly trace the shape of the letter into the un-baked dough. That made piping the correct shape later easier. Is there anything here that helps this process for me.

4. Any advice on brushes? Obviously my normal basting and pastry brushes won't do. Nor will the various craft/paint brushes lying around.

Any other input would be welcome, and thanks again.

Jody

[chefpeon]

First, I found a site that sells the whole hebrew alphabet in cookie cutters.......

here.

Now, my two cents. No, make that three cents.....the oil prices affect everything.

1. I've seen there are a variety of dusts -- luster dust, pearl dust, others. Would you particularly recommend one kind over another?

Like Jeannecake said, in that particular line of dusts, which a lot of sites sell, NuSilver is best. There's also a Moonstone Silver, but sheesh, that's like pencil lead. In my opinion, I don't think that NuSilver stuff is silver enough. It's more grayish than anything else. There's not enough luster to it at all. It's not......."chromey shiny" like I like it to be. However, Ambassador Fine Foods sells a gold dust and a silver dust that is shiny shiny shiny. It'll knock your socks off. I swear by that stuff.

2. Do I tint the icing the underlying color I want and paint over or do I do white and then paint over with the color I want?

Not necessary to tint your icing. The dusts are opaque enough not to need any additional undertoning.

4. Any advice on brushes? Obviously my normal basting and pastry brushes won't do. Nor will the various craft/paint brushes lying around.

I buy art brushes (sable mostly) in all sorts of sizes, shapes and stiffnesses that are reserved only for food work. It's not an expensive investment to go to the craft store and pick up a few brushes to suit your decorating needs.......

Hope that helps......

Edited May 4, 2005 by chefpeon (log)

[KatieM]

Jody,

I thought of a couple of ideas for you that might make this whole process a little easier. If you'd like to make the Hebrew letter silver, and the background a different color, bake the cookies in the torah shape and ice with your background color. Then, you could do one of two things to make the Hebrew letter.

One: Pipe the letters out of cookie dough (print a whole sheet of them off on your computer and place the sheet under parchment to trace). You would need to use a stiff dough like one you'd use with a cookie press. I saw this in a recent issue of Martha Stewart Weddings, where there were piped monogram cookies. It looked really cool. You could then ice the piped cookies white and paint (wet method with lemon extract and dust) them silver. Place the dried painted letters on top of the torah cookies secured with some more royal.

For that matter, you could just pipe the letters from royal icing onto waxed paper and let them dry and paint. I just usually have royal icing letters break on me, so that's not my preferred method.

Two: If you can find a small enough cookie cutter in the shape of the Hebrew letter, you could cut the letters out of gumpaste or fondant, then paint them.

Ditto the NuSilver recommendation. I haven't tried the Ambassador foods dust, I'll have to check that out. But if you want to make NuSilver shinier, you can add a little Super Pearl. That is what I always do, but then, I always have both in the house. Hope this helps!

[JFLinLA]

Actually, here's the method I was thinking of last night. I'll roll and cut my torah shapes and lightly trace the letter into the unbaked dough using the plastic stencil I made. After baking, when it comes time to decorate, I'll just do the Hebrew letter with the royal icing initially. After that dries, I can paint it with the silver. After that dries, I can pipe around it with tinted royal icing in my background color.

Does that sound crazy?

[binkyboots]

mmm... go easy on a icing newbie here (hey, bread needs no decoration, lol)

would it be possible to ice them then stick on silver leaf? that would give a shiny finish I think.

[JSkilling]

After my cookies are baked, I just use one of the food safe colored pens and trace what I want on the cookie. Then I can pipe over the lines in royal and fill in as I need to. The color of the pen is never seen since it gets filled. And I don't have to worry about mishapen lines from the stamping a stencil in the unbaked cookie approach.

[JFLinLA]

Can I use the food safe color pens on top of the royal icing? That way I can just ice the whole cookie once, stencil my design then paint.

[pastrymama]

As long as the royal icing is completely dry it will work fine. If it isn't dry all the way you may press through unless you press very lightly

[JSkilling]

Yes, the pens are meant to be used over a dry icing so you'd have no problem but I'm not sure why you want to do it that way. If you draw the letter you want, then you can fill in the extra space with your background color and treat it like a run out as opposed to having the raised design - unless you are looking to get a raised design. And if you do want the raised design, I'd roll that out in fondant and place it on the iced cookie since you could do several at a time and you wouldn't have to pipe the outline. You might also eat one and see what you think of that double layer of royal icing. Me, I love the stuff and am happy with both royal and fondant on a cookie but it is a lot of topping.

I'm sure they'll be lovely whichever you choose and I can't wait to see your pictures!

[Steve Klc]

And now for a contrarian point of view: if you care at all about taste, you will use metallic dusts very very sparingly or for non-edible decoration only--meaning on a decorative element that can be removed from your cake and not eaten. You won't paint wide heavy swaths with any metallic dust, even though it appears to be all the rage in the cake decorating circles.

You should also be be concerned about whether the dust you are using is considered edible and food-safe or merely labelled "non-toxic." You'll look for words that actually say it is safe to be consumed rather than words that say, specifically, it is not meant to be consumed. You'll realize that "most" dusts are nowhere near as pure as leaf, and not as safe. It is the purity of those gold and silver leaves that make them edible, and why leaf has historically been used in some very special sweet and savory culinary applications--like a French opera cake with a little gold leaf or an Indian kulfi dessert with a little silver leaf.

Everyone has to make their own decisions, just a word to the wise.

[chefpeon]

I completely agree with what Steve said. Usually when I use metallic dusts, they are on an element of the item that will probably get peeled off anyway.

Also, when I'm in "cookie mode", I'm in a frame of mind that involves less labor. You want a nice looking cookie but you certainly don't want to create a design where you're going be painstakingly spending too much time on each and every one. The first 20 are fun.....after that......not so much anymore. Besides, since cookies aren't usually the centerpiece in most food events, but are rather a delicious accent to the food event, the focus should be on taste more than anything else.

That's just what I've learned from experience.

[JFLinLA]

Thanks everyone for all the input. I think I'm going to forego the silver for these. It was an interesting concept but too much trouble in the end and not worth it.

The cookies (about 100) have all been baked, carefully wrapped, and are in the freezer. They will be decorated with plain old royal icing closer to the event. The food safe pen was a great suggestion and I will definitely use that to trace my design then pipe one color for that and another for the background.

[BROWNSUGA]

The recipe for Royal Icing at Gayle's Bakery here in town calls for:

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 t. egg white

1 T. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 t. corn syrup

1 t. water

Mix the egg white w/the sugar. Whisk -- it will be lumpy/crumbly. Add lemon juice and corn syrup and mix until smooth. It should run off the whisk in a slow and even stream. If not, add a little water. (I don't add it all at once.)

Throw it into your pastry bag (1/4" tip for hot cross buns, e.g.) and you're in business.

I have made this recipe many many times and it comes out perfectly. It's so white it looks like it had its teeth bleached.

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For the egg white, is it eggs, powdered egg whites or meringue powder?

[Tri2Cook]

I know that's a confusing thread title but I couldn't think of a good way to word it. My mom was a really good artist, she worked as a pastry chef but spent a lot of her free time drawing and doing large, extravagant embroidery panels based on her drawings. There was one particular drawing she did (I'm not sure if it was her own or her version of something she'd seen) that my grandmother loves. I want to recreate it in royal icing to put on my grandmother's 83rd birthday cake. I succeeded in doing the artwork by putting a copy of the drawing under a sheet of clear acetate and slowly over the course of a couple days tracing it with royal icing. It was very time consuming because there are a lot of colors involved and I wanted to be sure they didn't bleed into each other but it turned out pretty nice... until I tried to get it off the acetate once it had dried. Then pieces began to break so I said a few less than polite words and tossed it in the trashcan. The only cure I can come up with is to make it thicker next time but I'd be very appreciative of any suggestions or ideas from the cake decorating experts. I plan to place it on a matching sized slab of royal icing to make it stronger but I have to get it off the plastic first. I want to do this with my own hands so "copycake" and things of that nature are not an option I'm willing to consider and I'd prefer not to do it with airbrush either (I guess I'm a glutton for punishment but my original idea was to do it in royal icing and I liked the look that it gave the first one, it gave it some depth which fits with the picture I'm doing). Thanks.

[JeanneCake]

Maybe this is a job for SugarVeil icing? It's a type of royal icing that can be picked up and "played with" so to speak, when dry. It might be what you need for such an intricate design. Would it be possible to do the artwork in smaller areas and fit them together on the larger cake? Or if you're going to do it on a slab anyway, use one of those projectors to display the image onto a tile of fondant or gum paste and you could work at it over several days; then you don't have to move the embroidery, just the fondant tile.

[alanamoana]

why don't you make a batch of pastillage, roll it out thin and make your "slab"/plaque out of this. then, you can pipe your royal icing directly onto the pastillage which can then be placed on the cake or wherever...then after the party, removed and saved?

that will save you the trouble of trying to remove royal icing from acetate. as it sounds like you're trying to make a larger piece, this might be sort of impossible to transfer from one thing to another.

if you don't like that idea, you can stretch some plastic wrap (instead of acetate) over the drawing which you've taped to some cardboard. after piping and drying the royal icing, you can take the plastic wrap off by flipping the whole piece over and gradually peeling the plastic wrap off the back of the royal icing. since the plastic is more flexible than the acetate, this might work better.

[Tri2Cook]

Thanks for the ideas. I've never worked with the sugarveil icing but it looks interesting. The plastic wrap might do the trick, didn't think of that one. I don't know if I could pull it off freehand which is why I was doing it over plastic but I could give it a try. I don't do very much cake decorating, it's not something we do at work and I'm not particularly good at it, but when your 83 year old grandmother says she wants you to make her cake, you make her cake. Of course she didn't ask me to do the artwork I'm doing for it so that little difficulty is my own fault.

Edited June 10, 2007 by Tri2Cook (log)

[dystopiandreamgirl]

Whatever you end up doing, post some pics please!

[lorinda]

You could pipe a template of it in reverse, then use it to imprint the design onto (not dried) fondant, then go over the imprint in royal.

The success of this would depend on how detailed it was, but you could get the general lines, and fill in the details from sight.

[K8memphis]

You can spray a teensly bit of pan release on the surface and then wipe it evenly with a paper towel. There will be enough grease adhering to make it release well. I would use waxed paper though because it has a bit more flex.

How big is your finished product? You might want to consider doing it in fourths or something if it is really large. I would not want to make it more than a metal spatula width big. Otherwise you will encounter that annoying breakage.

Another idea is to scan your artwork. Laminate the copy or place tape over your paper pattern front and back and cut the pattern out around the outermost edges. The tape or lamination gives it that little bit more body so it holds up to tracing better. Trace that onto your surface. Then make another cut out for the essential details and trace those. Then just fill in the gaps.

Yes, pictures would be most welcome to see.

Ask the SugarVeil lady and she will give you the skinny if her product is the best. She is very helpful. I can't remember how it does for long term. I was really pleased with the gelatin water buttercream I made the other day. Just replace whatever liquid you use in your buttercream with gelatin water.

[onetoughcookie]

I do this kind of work all the time....royal "plaques", if you will. I always do mine on

parchment paper, as it's transparent, and I can get all the details down. When they are dry,

take the parchment and place it directly on a smooth counter surface as you face that counter. Slowly (and I mean slowly) pull the paper towards you, so that you're pulling the paper and it's off the counter. Pull down a bit and if perfectly dry, the plaques will pop off, and you won't have

as many breaks as you would if you were just picking them off. I always pipe out extras, too,

so I can choose the prettiest ones, and have enough for what I'm doing.

I'm actually doing some today that are tricky, because I have to pipe out a company's name

in their own font. The tricky part is that the font is Times Roman, which has many serifs.

Those skinny things can pose a problem, too! I'd like to pipe directly on the surface (which will be royal icing), but will never get that company name spot on. This thread is making me rethink the process, though, especially with transfer ideas.

[chefpeon]

Onetoughcookie said what I was going to say. Parchment. End of problem. It's thin enough to see through so you can trace your design, and no sticking problems either.