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

hi again in this video I'm talking about royal icing and consistency adjustments realizing 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 confectioners 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 confectioners sugar and egg whites as opposed to confectioners icing which is made with confectioner sugar and some other liquid elements such as water or lemon juice or milk and 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 drive 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 the 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 and me coming out but it may means it makes the icing more stretchy so it allows for more delicate line work and detail work as for roll 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 an ultimate cookies and cookie swap but I think it also helps to see how I blend it because consistency is so so with his 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 sized bag in the grocery store and I've already got that in the bowl to that I add about 1/2 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 the 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 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 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 in 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 as well this is simply dehydrated egg whites with some other additives that typically a sugar in it and some other 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 and 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 they're just going into the ball now 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 I'm 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 I'm 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 mixed 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 white serve 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 the high high speed the highest it will go pull makes this maybe for one to two minutes and you should see a color change it should be 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 10 minutes I see no reason for that I beat simply as long as it takes person becomes thick and very crisp white and usually that's about 1 to 2 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 as in the course of these videos and I'm referring to icing at this consistency that's made with two pounds of powdered sugar about 5 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 topcoat and some other effects on cookies that we'll talk about later it needs to be thin 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 in each 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 consistent coloring the icing and consistency adjustments normally for this task I would dole out a smaller quantity of the icing because that's that that quantity there is about four and a half to five and a half cups depending on how long you mixed it and the size the exact size of the egg whites and that can cover hundreds of cookies top coat hundreds of cookies and often times 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 loosen 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 this 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 is 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 call her 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 little 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 what 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 colorings I prefer certain brands some have very strong aftertaste particularly in the colors of blue black and purple and I find that Chef master 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 a little bit along 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 a little bit darker we 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 described 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 3/4 of a teaspoon of water to icing of this thickness to get it to the right consistency I'm not sure 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 in liquid I don't want to be whipping it at high speed on an electric mixer and popping 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 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon for cup of glue and what I'm looking for is for it to fall and 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 1 cup of glue that I made before and this time I want to loosen it to what I call I'm gonna 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 make and 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 wanted 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 the proportions there and I'm just going to put in and add another half teaspoon that takes us to about 2 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 is flowing relatively slowly and those tracks you know when the icing hits the bowl it creates these tracks they should disappear in roughly 15 second or so into the bulk of the rest of the icing if it's at the right consistency so that's top coding 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 this the last thing you want is ice crystals or rather sugar crystals in the bulk of bulk of your icing because they can plug parchment cones and reach all sorts of havoc oops this one I've already mixed outlining consistency earlier I'm going to take 1/3 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 actually already outlined the perimeter of the cookie and I want to flood the interior with a 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 2 to 3 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 topcoat and you'll see some of this in the next video so I think I've put in about two teaspoons there maybe a little bit too much for this quantity having a hard time work in 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 10 seconds or less and I don't know if you can see but they're disappearing almost immediately but you know that's actually not a big deal and I'm glad I made this steak the other thing you know 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 pop clogged 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 less stirring you do of flooding icing the less air you kick into it so I may have added just a just overshot a bit too much but if you see a lot of air bubbles in it you can wrap the bowl on the counter top that pops some of the air bubbles as we get into the outlining 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 a little bit thicker it's got a little bit more body and 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 to one to two inch cookie that's it unroyal icing and the basic consistency adjustments there are many more consistency adjustments dedicated to each techniques 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 Liz sweetly

Channel: JuliaMUsher

Views: 5,775,299

Keywords: How to make royal icing, decorating with royal icing, how to mix royal icing, royal icing, cookie decorating, decorated cookie, Julia M Usher, Tutorial, Cookie (Ingredient), Ultimate Cookies, Royal Icing (Food), Food (TV Genre), Icing (Food), cookie decorating with royal icing, How-to (Website Category)

Id: GO0_aNbL6Do

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 17 2014