How to Make Royal Icing and Use It!

Royal icing… the icing every cookier needs in their recipe box. This icing will dry hard, so you can easily stack cookies. Learn how to make royal icing and use it. Royal Icing can be used to make homemade sprinkles and transfer decorations on top of baked treats, from cookies to cupcakes and more.  

Royal icing can be flavored with a variety of extracts to create delicious, flavorful icing that’s perfect for decorating cookies. Add gel food coloring to create any color you need and make your next cookie masterpiece! It dries firm, so you can stack your decorated cookies and even ship them.

It’s smooth and can be drizzled over cookies, you can use it to outline cookies as well as flood the icing in so the icing is smooth and solid on top of the cookies.

Royal icing is also great for making transfers to go on top of cupcakes, cookies, or other baked treats. I’ve included lots of photos and links where I’ve used royal icing in this post, so keep an eye out!

Here I made pink ribbons, and you can see the possibilities are endless for what you can make with royal icing.

More ideas for adding decorations to cupcakes are these Gingerbread Men and Pumpkins.

You can also use royal icing to make cupcake toppers. Any simple shape can be made in any color you can imagine.

Wow, the possibilities are endless. You can also put the royal icing toppers on brownies, cakes, and cookies. They really create a 3D effect.

Royal Icing Googly Eyes:

You know those googly eyes that you see on crafts that kids make, they wiggle and giggle and move all around.

Well, these may not wiggle and giggle, but they look like them in candy form. Like candy buttons, you remember those… Right? The paper stuck to the back of those cute colored button candy dots.

Adding the googly eyes to this salty-sweet pretzel toffee makes it perfect for Halloween.

HERE is the post on the red heart on top of the cupcake, SO CUTE!

These are made out of royal icing, they are easy to make, and the best part is you can make them ahead of time.

These are great for decorating cookies, cakes, and fun for any edible face.

I’ve made a few treats I’m going to share with you that use these royal icing googly eyes shortly, and I thought I’d share just how to make the eyes first.

 

Begin by making a stiff royal icing. Use a stand mixer or stand mixer.

Then adjust how thin you need it by adding water to the desired consistency you would like to work with.

Adding drops of water and completely mixing before adding too much.

I use Americolor White food coloring and Americolor Very Black food coloring to create the colors.

Put the icing into piping bags or bottles fitted with a coupler and round tip, I used a #2 for the white and a #1 for the black.

When piping the eyes, if you pipe them out like the photo above and they don’t lay smoothly.

They make peaks like chocolate chips, you will need to add a few drops of water and mix well until you pipe out the icing smoothly.

Pipe the icing onto wax paper.

Allow the icing to dry completely before peeling it off the paper, or it will crack.

I allow 12 hours for them to dry. I try to make any type of decoration like this a few days ahead, so they are completely dried, and I’m not fussing with them at the last minute for the project I’m working on.

You can find how cute little gingerbread transfers for these cupcakes

 And with just some small details on cookies, you can really make them stand out. These Gingerbread Spice cookies and one of my all time favorite recipes and I make them every year!

The icing should look smooth and shiny when piped onto the paper.

Have both white and black icing ready to pipe, as you don’t want the white to set up too long before piping the black, or the black icing won’t recess into the white and look smooth.

Here are some cookies decotated with royal icing

• Red Velvet Snowflakes
• Chocolate Gingerbread Christmas Trees
•  Reindeer Cupcakes
•  Snowman Cupcakes
•  Snowman Cookies

Be sure to check those out, you may get inspired!

Let’s talk about meringue powder. If you use it often, this is not an issue. If you primarily use it only around the holidays (once a year), then be sure you are using “fresh” meringue powder. Keep it in the freezer for added freshness.

If you use old meringue powder, you WILL NOT know it’s “bad” until you’ve iced the cookies and the icing is dry… then it will crumble with the slightest touch and turn to a weird powder, and the mess will go everywhere.

Especially if you bite into the cookie…

I suggest purchasing meringue powder and keeping it fresh. You wouldn’t want to go through all the work of making the items you want with meringue powder and having it be a mess!

I’ve also found that over-mixing royal icing will have a drier result and crumble.

So I’ve started adding some corn syrup to the icing as I mix the colors, and am happy to say the texture is really nice. So for every cup or so of icing, I added a tablespoon of corn syrup, the cookies dried with a little more sheen, less matte than usual, and didn’t crumble or become cement hard. Biting into the cookies was much more pleasant.

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Royal icing is one of those things that takes a little practice, but once you work with it enough, it gets easier.

You become more familiar with how thick or thin you prefer your icing and how it pipes and dries as well.

Be sure to check out my Italian cut-out cookie recipe as seen here with these cute snowman snowflake cookies.

 

I piped red hearts onto wax paper, let them dry overnight, and then placed them on top of the frosting on these cupcakes.

 

LOTS of info on baking cookies here:

• Cookie tips guide 
• How to bake perfect cookies 
• Easy Cut Out Cookies
• Cookie Dough Recipe that holds its shape 
• Soft Sugar Cookies and Frosting 
• How to ice cookies with a piping bag
• Brush on glaze icing 
• Resources, recipes, items, and instructions for baking perfect cookies
• Royal icing recipe