[MUSIC PLAYING] Let's talk about royal
icing consistency. You can use royal icing
to pipe decorations. You can use it as a glue to hold
together gingerbread houses. And you can even use it
to decorate a cookie. The key to using royal icing is
knowing the right consistency and how to adjust it. If your icing's too stiff, it
can be pretty hard to pipe. And if your icing's too
thin, your decorations might start drooping. And you do not want that. Let's start with stiff
consistency icing. This icing is best
for decorations that really need to stand up. Stiff icing is used for piping
roses because those petals need to be upright. Some decorators also
like stiff icing for gingerbread
house construction because it's really sturdy. Since it has less water,
it dries pretty fast, which is exactly
what you want when you're sticking parts together. Our royal icing recipe is
already stiff consistency. But if you're in
a humid area, you might want to make this
recipe extra stiff. To do that, you're going to add
a teaspoon of confectioners' sugar, just a teaspoon at
a time until you get it to the right consistency. Next we had medium
consistency icing. Medium consistency royal
icing is pretty similar to buttercream. It's pretty versatile. You can use it for
a lot of things like borders and rosettes. When you pipe those pretty
little drop flowers, using medium consistency
is really important. I cannot stress that enough. Some of the drop flower tips
have really tiny openings, and stiff icing will be
pretty hard to push through. What's worse is that it can
clog the tip pretty quickly because it dries so fast. In fact, if you're having
problems with drop flowers, there's a really good
chance that your icing needs to be thinned to medium. To adjust a stiff
consistency icing to medium add an 1/8 of a
teaspoon of water for every 1/2 cup of icing. If your icing is still dry,
you can add a little bit more, but just make sure you're
doing it in small increments. Thin consistency
royal icing is very different from buttercream. Thin consistency buttercream
still has somebody to it, but thin royal icing
is pretty liquid. Thin consistency
royal icing is mainly used for flooding cookies. Some people know
it as cookie icing. It dries to a smooth,
hard finish that looks almost like porcelain. To make a stiff
icing thin, you're going to need some water
and a lot of patience. You need to add 1/2 a
teaspoon of water to 1/2 a cup of stiff icing to start. This will begin to
thin down your icing, but not quite
enough for flooding. You can keep adding water
just a little bit at a time until you end up with a
consistency of thick school glue, maybe just
a touch thicker. I want to talk quickly
about what liquid you use to adjust your royal icing. Water is the standard
liquid that we recommend, but, like buttercream, you
can also use corn syrup to thin your royal icing. If your icing is the
right consistency, but it keeps breaking or maybe
you're having a hard time with decorations that have points
like the leaf, for example, try thinning with corn syrup
because it's going to give your icing just a tiny bit of
elasticity that water won't. Royal icing thinned
with corn syrup will take a little bit longer
to set up compared to water. Whatever consistency
you end up using, the most important
thing to remember is that royal icing will set up
hard when it's exposed to air. So remember to cover any open
containers with a damp cloth and do the same for your bags. Put a damp cloth over your
tips so they don't get clogged. [MUSIC PLAYING]
