How to Make Royal Icing (Plus, Coloring and Consistency Adjustments)

Hi again, in this video I'm talking about royal icing and consistency adjustments. Royal icing is my favorite decorating medium, but let me back up before I dive into how to make it. Let me talk about the typical decorating icings that are used on cookies and why it is I prefer this one. Typically there are three. One is royal icing, the second is confectioner's icing, also known as glaze, and the other is rolled fondant, which is a sweet sugary dough. I prefer royal icing because it's made with confectioner's sugar and egg whites as opposed to confectioner's icing, which is made with confectioner's sugar and some other liquid elements such as water, lemon juice, or milk. That might not sound like a big difference, but it is. The egg whites have a lot of protein in them and they cause the icing to set up and dry very very quickly. That becomes important if you're doing a lot of cookies that require a lot of layering of icing. The faster those under layers can dry, the more quickly you can move on to the next step. Likewise if you're doing wet on wet techniques, which we'll talk about a couple videos from now where the icings go down wet next to each other, the faster they dry, the less likely are the colors are to bleed into one another. So there are a lot of advantages to royal icing from a drying standpoint. Those egg whites also give it a high tensile strength. That's the engineer in me coming out, but it means it makes the icing more stretchy, so it allows for more delicate line work and detail work. As for rolled fondant, I mentioned that, that's a sweet sugary dough. Some decorators will cover their whole cookies with it. I'm really not fond of doing that. I don't like the texture of it. It will dry crunchy, but when you chew on it, it reverts to kind of a gummy quality, which I think interferes with the taste of the cookie. So I do love how rolled fondant can be shaped and molded, but I'll typically only use it for small isolated elements on cookies that one can pluck off if they don't like the texture of it. So royal icing is my favorite, and I'm going to show you how I make it. The recipe is also in Ultimate Cookies and Cookie Swap, but I think it also helps to see how I blend it, because consistency is so, so important with this icing, as we'll learn not only in this video, but as we move forward. So here we've got, I start with my basic batch of royal icing starts with two pounds of powdered sugar. That's a standard size bag in the grocery store, and I've already got that in the bowl. To that, I add about a half teaspoon of cream of tartar, which is an acid that lends a little acidity, obviously, sharpness to the icing, but more importantly, it keeps the white whiter over a longer period of time, so if you're doing show pieces like gingerbread houses, that white icing will stay really crisp. Some decorators add white food coloring to their icing to keep it white. I've never had to do that, and perhaps it's because I use cream of tartar. So that goes in. At this point, you want to give it just a quick stir to distribute that cream of tartar, and then the next element that goes in is the egg whites. In order to contain any risk of contamination from salmonella, you want to be certain to work with pasteurized egg whites, which come in different forms. You can use those that come in the container, and typically, five large egg whites, which is what I call for in this recipe, would be about 11 to 12 tablespoons of this product. Alternatively, you can work with pasteurized shell eggs, so these eggs are actually pasteurized in the shell, and they're marked with a P, and that's what I've got measured out over there. I will say that these eggs are much more difficult to separate than the typical egg, so you may have to use a little bit more than five large egg whites. You might have to crack six of these to get the equivalent liquid content. One other alternative to using moist pasteurized eggs is meringue powder, and this works well as well. This is simply dehydrated egg whites with some other additives that typically have sugar in it and some other de-clumping agents that keep it powdery, and this would need to be hydrated, that is, mixed with warm water before you actually put it into the royal icing. I typically don't work with it because it can be gritty unless you really dissolve it first. It tends to make the royal icing a little bit more spongy than if you were to work with these products here, but that's also a possibility. Okay, on to making it. I've got roughly five large egg whites in there, and they're just going into the bowl. At this juncture, since I've got a really small mixer here, I'm going to stir to combine so my powdered sugar doesn't fly everywhere, and start this on low speed. And my royal icing, before I start that, my royal icing mixes to a very thick consistency. I do that on purpose because when you start mixing, you'll notice that the icing is kind of gray and murky and loose. You have to mix it a relatively long period of time for it to turn crisp white, and the incorporation of air is what makes it go from gray to white. So it's very, very thick when I do this because I don't want to pump a lot of air bubbles in it. I need to mix it long enough that it gets white, but I don't want to incorporate a lot of air, so I mix it thick. If I were to mix it much looser, I'd end up with much more air bubbles in the end product. So I'm going to start low just to get it going, and once that I see that I've got a mass of sugar combined with the egg whites, I'm just going to scrape it down because the powdered sugar does like to kind of ride up the side of the mixer, and make sure it's all in the center part of the mixer, and it'll be safe pretty soon to turn this to high speed. I only mix for about one to two minutes. That's generally long enough to get this really sharp white and very, very thick. Okay, so it's starting to come together, and I'm just going to turn it up to high speed, and we're going to continue to mix until it's very, very thick. Okay, so now the powdered sugar and the egg whites have come together, but it's still kind of an off-white. It's kind of a dirty white, so I'm going to kick it up to high, high speed, the highest it will go. We'll mix this maybe for one to two minutes, and you should see a color change. It should be a very crisp white by the time it's done. You may have to scrape down the sides of the bowl in the process, but we're just going to let this go for a bit before I do that. And as you incorporate air, not only does it get whiter, but the icing also thickens considerably. Now, some bakers have recipes that require them to beat for ten minutes. I see no reason for that. I beat simply as long as it takes for it to become thick and very crisp white, and usually that's about one to two minutes after it's come together, and we're about at that point, so I'm going to turn off the mixer and show you what it looks like. So as you can see, crisp white, very, very, very thick. In fact, this is so thick I call it glue in my book, and you'll hear me referring back to glue in the course of these videos, and I'm referring to icing at this consistency. It's made with two pounds of powdered sugar, about five large egg whites, and a half teaspoon cream of tartar. This is the perfect consistency for putting together gingerbread houses and gluing three-dimensional cookies together, but obviously it's not going to work to create a smooth icing top coat and some other effects on cookies that we'll talk about later. It needs to be thinned to the right consistency for almost every decorating task. So I'm going to show you a little bit about how to do that, but first, before I do that, this would be the time to actually flavor up the icing, so let me get the beater back on there. I encourage you to flavor up your icing to taste. Everybody has a different flavor profile, but I do have some suggested flavor combinations and quantities in my book. I'm going to put in about, and each flavoring flavors differently as well, extracts flavor differently than oils, lemon tastes different than anise, so again, flavoring to taste is usually a good rule of thumb in my book. I put in a teaspoon of lemon, we'll stir that up, but it's important that the cookies taste as good as they look, so we want to make sure that's properly flavored, and now we're ready to move on to coloring the icing and consistency adjustments. Normally, for this task, I would dole out a smaller quantity of the icing, because that quantity there is about four and a half to five and a half cups, depending on how long you mixed it and the exact size of the egg whites, and that can cover hundreds of cookies, top coat hundreds of cookies, and oftentimes I'm not doing a run that large, so I usually will dole it into smaller quantities, as I am about to do, to color it up. And now is the time I like to color it, actually, when it's very, very thick as opposed to loosened. I don't know what the science is here, but I find that, and you'll see, I just want to point this out, this clings very nicely to the spoon, and in fact, you might come back tomorrow and I'd still be standing here and still be stuck to the spoon, so this is what I mean about the glue consistency, that's kind of what you're looking for at this stage. And this is the stage at which I color, because for whatever reason, I find that the color sets better with less modeling and spotting if I mix it in when it's thick, and then later thin to different consistencies. If I put the color in when the icing's very, very loose, it tends to migrate more as it dries, and I just never get the same smooth, even finish as I do if I color this way. A word on food colorings, as you're going to hear in all of these videos, consistency is king for your icing, so if you're taking, you know, all these precautions to bring your icing to the right consistency, the last thing you want to do is mess with it by putting in a lot of liquid food coloring to make a really intense color, if that's what you're going for. So I tend to prefer, in fact, I very much prefer working with a highly concentrated food coloring, and I work with a liquid gel, also known as a soft gel food coloring, highly concentrated, and a little bit goes a long way, so it doesn't mess with the icing consistency as much. You can also work with a gel or paste food coloring, which is even more concentrated, but the disadvantage of this form is it usually comes in a lidded container, which makes it very difficult to dole out into the icing. You have to do it with a toothpick, in this case with a trussing needle, which I use for other tasks, and just is very, very messy, and it doesn't allow you to create color formulas. The advantage of this type is that it often comes with a dropper top, which allows me to actually count out drops of coloring and create precise formulas. I'm going to show you what I mean by a little bit goes a long way, I'm just going to put in a couple drops of pink here. Another comment on food coloring is I prefer certain brands. Some have very strong aftertastes, particularly in the colors of blue, black, and purple. I find that Chefmaster brand, not only does it come in this size with this dropper top, but it tends to be much more mildly flavored. So a little bit of pink goes quite a long way, as you can see. That's just two drops in about a cup of icing. That's about a medium pink. If I wanted it a little bit darker, we'd just add a few more drops. And this is still a glue consistency, but if I were to use it for other tasks, it's going to need to be thinned out, and I'm going to talk a little bit about consistency adjustments. There are many that I describe in the book, but I'm going to talk about the three that I use most commonly. The first is for outlining, which is creating thin lines with a parchment pastry cone, and that requires a relatively thick icing, but not quite as thick as this. Generally, I add about, oh, half a teaspoon to three quarters of a teaspoon of water to icing of this thickness to get it to the right consistency. I'm not sure of the exact quantity, and I add that to about one cup of my glue. I'm not sure what quantity I have in this bowl, so I'm just going to eyeball it. At this point, I can do this all by feel, just by how the icing looks and feels to the spoon. But if you're a beginner, I would recommend you start with the guidelines in the book, the measurements I provide, and move from there. I'm just going to add a touch more water, and you'll notice that I'm not using the electric mixer at this point, because I'm adding moisture and liquid. I don't want to be whipping it at high speed on an electric mixer and pumping a lot of air bubbles into it, so I'm going to be stirring from here on out when I do any kind of thinning of icing. So this is looking about where I want it for outlining, which is, again, piping thin lines and borders on cookies. It's about one half to three quarters teaspoon per cup of glue, and what I'm looking for is for it to fall in blobs off my spoon, essentially, like so, and that should be a perfect consistency for outlining. We'll talk more about consistency adjustments in each of the videos as I tackle the actual technique, but again, I just wanted to show you these few consistency adjustments so you get a sense of what you're really looking for. Here's another roughly one cup of glue that I made before, and this time I want to loosen it to what I call, let me get this icing off my hand, what I call top coating consistency, which is the consistency with which you would spread icing on a cookie to leave a flat, glassy surface. And I often do top coating without a border, so I like this a little bit thicker than what you might know of as flooding consistency, which we'll talk about next. So for top coating to this cup of glue, I generally add about one and a half to two and a half teaspoons of water, again, stirring, stirring it in, and again, I do this by feel now, but because it has become second nature, I do a lot, a lot of cookie decorating every day of the week, but to start helps to measure it out, and also to know what visual cues you're really looking for. I do have a range on this, this one and a half to two and a half teaspoons, because I want it a little bit thicker. Top coating for me is covering a cookie without any outline or dam, so I want it a little bit thicker for smaller cookies so it doesn't run off the cookie edge, it can be a little bit looser for larger cookies, so that's why I have that range on the proportions there. And I'm just going to put in another half teaspoon, that takes us to about two teaspoons of water in there, and this is going to be just about right. Now this one wasn't tinted, but hopefully you can see. Here I'm looking for the icing to flow relatively slowly off the spoon, as opposed to plopping for outlining, it's flowing relatively slowly, and those tracks, you know, when the icing hits the bowl, it creates these tracks, they should disappear in roughly 15 seconds or so into the bulk of the rest of the icing, if it's at the right consistency. So that's top coating consistency. When I'm not working with the icing, because of the protein in the egg whites, it crusts very very quickly, so I always cover it with plastic wrap, sometimes and oftentimes flush with the plastic wrap to prevent that skin from forming, because after you've done all this, the last thing you want is ice crystals, or rather sugar crystals in the bulk of your icing because they can plug parchment cones and wreak all sorts of havoc. Oops, this one I've already mixed to outlining consistency earlier, I'm going to take a third cup of the thick glue, I think this is a little less than a cup, and show you what it looks like when it comes to flooding consistency. So to distinguish flooding from top coating, flooding is when I've actually already outlined the perimeter of the cookie, and I want to flood the interior with really loose icing to give it a smooth top coat. I could work with top coating icing for this most certainly, but you can move a little bit faster if you just loosen it up a bit, and since you've got the outline acting as a dam on the cookie, there's no risk of runoff if you have it a little bit looser, and in this case I generally use anywhere from two to three teaspoons of water per cup of that glue, and again there's a range on it because I will go heavier with the water if I've got a larger cookie to smoothly top coat, and you'll see some of this in the next video. So I think I put in about two teaspoons there, maybe a little bit too much for this quantity, having a hard time working the water in, and now when working with this flooding consistency icing you want to be especially careful not to pump too much air into it, because this is when you're going to be incorporating a lot more bubbles because the icing is looser, so I'm trying to stir as gently as possible. This to me, I overshot with the water, I had less than a cup of icing in here, and it's running really fast off the spoon. What I'm typically looking for is it to run less fast off the spoon and for the tracks to disappear in ten seconds or less, and I don't know if you can see but they're disappearing almost immediately, but that's actually not a big deal and I'm glad I made this mistake. The other thing that tells me I made a mistake is I've got clumps of icing that aren't distributing well into the liquid, so I've made a mistake, but you can always correct it by adding more powdered sugar to thicken it up. I do prefer to sift the powdered sugar in, because powdered sugar can get clumpy and those clumps can clog cones and pastry bags and things, and hopefully this will thicken it up just enough to about the right consistency. I like it when I don't make these kinds of mistakes because the less stirring you do of flooding icing, the less air you kick into it, so I may have added just a bit too much, but if you see a lot of air bubbles in it, you can wrap the bowl on the countertop, that pops some of the air bubbles. As we get into the outlining and top coating video and flooding videos, I'll be showing you how to use a trussing needle, also known as a turkey laser, to kind of pop any air bubbles that do end up kicking themselves up into the icing. So there you go, it's a little bit thicker, it's got a little bit more body, it's not racing off the spoon quite as fast. This would be a good consistency for a very large cookie. I might even thicken it up further for a smaller cookie, say a 1-2 inch cookie. That's it on royal icing and the basic consistency adjustments, there are many more consistency adjustments dedicated to each technique, such as dipping, stenciling, and marbling, which you'll find in Ultimate Cookies and as we'll talk about in the future videos, and until then, live sweetly!