Royal Icing Recipe and Tips (2024)

FAQs

What is the 10 second rule for royal icing? ›

If the icing surface becomes smooth in anywhere between 5-10 seconds, then your icing is ready to use. If it takes longer than approximately 10 seconds, the icing is too thick. Slowly add more water. If your icing surface smoothes over in less than 5-10 seconds, it is too runny.

Outlining-consistency icing should squeeze easily out of a #2 pastry tip, stay in place, and hold its shape on the cookie when it lands. If the icing is too stiff, it will be hard to squeeze.

To achieve flood consistency, start with stiff icing and add a couple of tablespoons of water at a time. To test it, take a spoonful of icing and drop it back into the bowl. It should take between 15-20 seconds for the icing to smooth itself out. This is known as 15 or 20-second count royal icing.

There are different versions of royal icing out there, but this is an easy one that comes together quickly with basic ingredients. This recipe uses milk instead of water, which gives it more flavor and just a tad of creaminess.

-Spread the icing over the top of the cake with the spatula so that it just tips over the sides. -Lean against the turntable to hold it firmly in place (without touching the cake), hold the metal ruler horizontally at a 45° angle and pull it towards you evenly across the surface of the icing to smooth it.

Overmixing the icing

If you overmix or mix the icing on a high setting, you'll whip too much air into the mix, leaving you with a frosting that looks more like a crunchy sponge than a smooth finish. Follow our step-by-step guide to make perfect royal icing.

Some form of egg whites is an essential ingredient in royal icing as this is what allows the icing to harden. Meringue powder, fresh egg whites, or egg white powder can be used.

The 1M is the most popular piping tip. It's often referred to as the Wilton 1M tip, but you can use any brand of 1M tip, such as Loyal or PME. It's a perfectly sized star tip that is fantastic for piping rosettes on cupcakes or adding detailed borders onto your cake edges.

Undermix, and your royal icing looks translucent and is structurally weak. Overwhip, and you're giving too much volume to the egg proteins via air, causing the structure to weaken in a different way. Overmixed icing usually looks porous when dry, and sometimes will not even fully dry and be soft/brittle.

Different people use different methods and consistencies for flooding, but most people use the timing method to determine if royal icing is at the right consistency by dropping a bit of icing into the bowl with the rest of the icing and counting how many seconds it takes to reincorporate completely.

Why is my royal icing not puffy? ›

You have to use a thicker consistency that you're used to. Think of the “glob and ribbon” consistency but with little to no ribboning. If your icing is ribboning off the spoon into the bowl, it's too thin and won't hold the shape for puffy royal icing.

On the other hand, cream of tartar on its own is often included in royal icing recipes, as one of its key functions is to stabilize whipped egg whites. (It's also used to stabilize whipped cream and to prevent sugar syrups from crystallizing.)

Take care not to beat the icing any longer than is needed to turn it crisp white, and to only beat it at high speed at this very thick consistency. Extended beating, especially of looser icing, can pump a lot of air into it, creating tiny (or not so tiny) bubbles that can be difficult to eradicate once incorporated.

Disadvantages: Royal icing can crack. This makes it ill-suited for covering large surface areas (for instance an entire cake) or curved surfaces. Royal icing is rarely the most nuanced of flavors, with a somewhat bland (albeit sweet) flavor.

Probably the most common method for measuring flood consistency is called the “seconds” method. Simply, this is the number of seconds it takes for a flood consistency to settle. A 10 second flood is going to settle quite quickly and therefore be a thinner flood.

When you hear me say that icing is a 20 second or 15 second consistency, what that means is when you have a bowl of icing and you take just a little drop and plop it down into the rest of the icing, that's how many seconds it takes to reincorporate and go smooth back over the top of the icing.

Flooding Royal Icing Consistency

For the counting method, if you spoon out some icing and let it drip back into the bowl, it will disappear in a certain amount of seconds. This can vary anywhere from around 5 seconds up to 15 seconds for flood icing.