My Royal Icing Process + Taking Recommendations!

I’ve been posting my royal icing cookies and getting comments from people who want to learn to make them, so I’m posting my process and some of the things I’ve learned!

⭐️ If you love looking at royal icing cookies, but aren’t ready to give them a try, comment what cookies you’d like to see! ⭐️

COOKIE DOUGH

For the cookie dough, I use “The Best Sugar Cookie” recipe from Broma Bakery. I typically use 2 tsp vanilla extract and skip the almond extract.

The most important thing when picking a cookie recipe is that you need cookies that aren’t going to spread, they’ll hold their cookie cutter shape. The Broma recipe, like many others, uses refrigerated dough, so I try and keep the dough cool through the entire process, putting it pack in the fridge when it gets too soft.

I have a lot of cookie cutters, but usually I find myself making a parchment paper stencil and cutting out the shapes, because the possibilities are endless (the dough needs to stay cold for this!)

BAKING

I bake the cookies following the Broma recipe, since cookies can be all sorts of shapes, it’s really important to keep an eye on them and adjust the time accordingly.

After the cookies bake, I let them cool. I typically don’t start icing until the next day, to prevent butter stains in the icing.

I also flip them over and put the “top” on whatever rack I’m using to keep the “bottoms” flat. Icing the bottom of the cookies provides a flatter surface and the bottoms don’t have the beveled edge so the icing can go all the way to the edge without falling off.

MAKING THE ICING

I use the “My Favorite Royal Icing” recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction for the icing.

The trick to royal icing is finding the right consistency for each element. Flooding icing to fill the background needs to be a bit more runny while icing for small details usually needs to be stiffer to hold.

When using the royal icing recipe, don’t just add all the water right away! You’ll want to start with a small amount and then add until you get the consistency that you want. If you’ve added too much water, it’s usually better to run the mixer for a while to stiffen up the icing rather than add more sugar, because you can mess up the sugar to meringue powder ratio and the icing may not harden as well.

It’s all about practice!

Gel coloring works great for colors because it’s super concentrated and liquid food coloring will mess up the consistency you worked so hard to get! I use the Wilton gel food coloring.

DECORATING

To decorate my cookies, I use the Wilton reusable piping bags, with the Wilton tips and couplers.

The best advice I can give to someone starting out is to keep it simple.

For your first batch, this is a good guideline ——>

Stick to one design with one or two colors. This could be a white bowling pin with red stripes or a white sand dollar with white detailing on top.

Create a thinner flood icing with your first color and fill each cookie. I usually tap each cookie on the counter to allow the icing to fully spread and remove air bubbles. Then, wait until the icing hardens, this takes a couple hours.

Create a stiffer detail icing, with the same or a different color. After your flood icing has hardened, add your details on top.

Let this icing harden, and then your cookies are ready!

The repetition will allow you to get the hang of the movements and you won’t be overwhelmed by having so many things to do.

As time goes on, you’ll have more ideas and see more cookies you’ll want to make. One of the best ways to learn new piping techniques and how people achieve different looks is by watching videos!

ENJOY

Let me know if this walk through of my process is helpful and if you learned something new!

#lemon8food #lemon8foodcoupon @Lemon8 Food #royalicingcookies #royalicing #cookiedecorating #bakingrecipe #bakingtips #cookies #letschat #bakersoflemon8