- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, I'm going to show you how
to make and use Royal icing. So let's get started. For this classic icing, you'll need three egg whites, some
powdered sugar, flavoring, I'm using vanilla, and
if you're dying them, you'll want to get some food coloring too. First off, we're going
to separate our eggs. We want three egg whites
for this recipe, and yes, you can double it if you're
making an extra big batch. You do not want to
break your yolks though, so be very careful. If you like to use an
egg separator, go ahead. I find that clean hands work really well. Okay, I'll do the best practice. Best practice is to add the egg white into the bowl one at a time, just in case the unthinkable
happens and a yolk breaks, you won't be brokenhearted. Real icing does use raw eggs. If you have any concerns, go
ahead and pasteurize the eggs. It's really easy, just
bring a little pot of water to 140, keep it at 140,
and then you're going to just dip your eggs in
and let them sit there for three to four minutes. Last yolk in. Okay, that's set aside. We'll use those later. Egg whites into the bowl. Pull that mixer towards you. You're going to mix these
until they're frothy and I should have said earlier, make sure your bowl is nice and clean. You don't want any residual frosting, that's not a good idea. If you're extra concerned,
you can wipe it down with some vinegar, you'll
always know it's squeaky clean. We're going to mix this. (mixer whirring) And by the way, you can
definitely use hand mixers if you prefer yours to be
sitting there for a few minutes. So yes you can. Wait, I just realized
since we're doing things the right way so you can
have the best result, let's sift our confectioner sugar. It's not a must do, but
it's just going to be kind of annoying if there's any lumps, even though they should get worked out, but should is not my favorite word. We want one pound or 450
grams of confectioner sugar. Royal icing is one of those
really intimidating things, I have to tell you. I was not a good cookie
decorator for the longest time, so I did a little bit of
practice, a little bit of reading, and it's actually much easier if you just follow a few easy steps. Back to mixing, this is all measured out. And as you can see, I actually mixed it for a minute already. These eggs are nice and frothy, so we're going to slowly
add our powdered sugar in, let it mix in. If you see that there's like
a wall of powdered sugar, you can just scrape it down,
but it should work itself out. This is like an episode of I Love Lucy. Gosh. Last of my powder sugar is going in, I'm just mixing it on low. I'm going to give it one
final just tamp down. Once this is fully incorporated, we're going to move it up to medium high and beat for about three to four minutes or until stiff, shiny peaks form. I'm going to show you what
that looks like though, because they need to be stiff and shiny. I see some sugar on the
bowl, I need to tamp it down. By the way, if you just
dumped the sugar in, you would lose a lot of
volume so you don't want to just dump it in. With any kind of egg/sugar situation, you always add the sugar in slowly. Right now, I just want to check. This is like, it's looking shiny. Definitely not stiff, is it? Nope, so we're going to keep going. We're pumping air into
this, we're volumizing it. We're making it really like
luscious in the texture and it's going to be amazing. While I'm at it, let's add that vanilla. You could also use almond
extract, lemon extract, whatever you want. Just one teaspoon or a
little bit less is fine. There we go. Medium high, stiff and glossy. We're going to check back in on this. Checking back in. Ah, look at this. This is nice. See, that is fairly stiff. I like that. You can see it's holding its
shape, it's stiff and glossy. That's what it looks like in the bowl. This is going to be so
great to do a consistency that's for outlining. When you make Royal
icing, you have two types: one's for outline, one's for flooding. This is the outline batch. We're going to add water
but just a little bit later on to make a flooding consistency, and you'll see how that's different. Many times the cookie does go like this, and it's all going to just
flow out and look messy, so I'll show you how
to do it the right way. For now, we're going to grab some cookies, which I baked ahead of time
so they're nice and cool. These are using my really
easy cutout cookie recipe, so you can click up here for that. Beautiful straight lines, delicious too. You want your cookies to be cool, and now choose the colors that you want. Today, I'm going to make some snowmen, some Christmas trees, and some snowflakes. So really I want white, green, red, black, orange, and like, I want like a lot of green, a lot of white, a little
red, a little black. So I'm going to divide this
into bowls and get to work. We're always going to
choose our color first, then change the consistency. And by the way, if you need
to step away for any time, like the kids are calling,
you have to do something, just cover this up. You can use plastic or whatever, and just make sure it's airtight. Because if you don't, this will dry out, you're not going to be happy. First off, the easy one is
your white outlining frosting. So go ahead and we're icing. We're going to add a small round tip, it's like a number two, three, or four. All of those will work. In a pinch, you can definitely just cut the tip off of a piping bag or even like a regular plastic bag. However, you're going to be happier if you use around tip. Just cleaner and less frustrating. You don't need that much
frosting for the outline, so just grab oh, a quarter
cup or less usually. You can see that, look at
that wonderful texture. It's like marshmallow, it's very nice. This is ready. Perfect, so this stay
in here just like that. Now we need our flooding
consistency white, that's going to go into a bowl. We're using more this time. This is for all the
snowmen and snowflakes, that sort of thing. For other colors, we're
just gonna use one batch. We're going to dye it first. Once you're doing this, work with purpose and don't walk away and do other stuff because it dries out so quickly. Look at these beaters or
this beater, totally dry. It's set up quickly, so we always cover it and just don't walk away. Just like the song says. Some of the batches are
going to be really small, like for the orange noses for my snowmen and some will be a little bit larger, so just know what you're going to pipe and kind of guesstimate it out. And you can always leave
some Royal icing in reserve. Cover that back up,
that's my emergency icing. And now one note about coloring: if you just run your mixer with a color on and you want to make a
big batch, don't do that. Just use a spatula to mix it in because this is not egg
white, it's not sugar, and you don't want to beat it up too much and incorporate things
that you don't want there. I actually want to add
in just a hint of black. A tiny little drop. Right now, we're going to mix this up and just fold it in. Using black just tones the colors down, makes them a little bit
more appealing to the eye, but it's totally up to you. And I'm using gel food colorings, that's in the description box
if you want to pick some up, but they're much more concentrated, which I love because you're
not adding a ton of water in. Now, pop in that piping
tip, its a number three. So to outline these trees, I'm not going to need a ton. That is ready to go. And now I need to add
a little bit of water. So if I drizzle some of this icing over, you can see it's totally
just maintaining its shape. It's not even losing back into itself. See that? That's not flooding consistency. Flooding consistency will
spread out and relax. So let's grab a teaspoon. I'm going to add in a
quarter teaspoon of water, just a little bit. It's a stingy quarter teaspoon too. Two really heavy drops of water. And we're going to stir this in, adding the remaining drop of water. It seems silly, but this is what gets you. This is one of the pain
points of Royal icing is finding that right
consistency and just not getting frustrated
because if you have to add more Royal icing back
in, you change the color. So you have to add more
dye in, which just sucks. You don't want to do
that, so slow and steady will win the race. This is what you should be looking for. Let the icing drizzle
back in and it should flow and disappear. That is ready. Now we can transfer this to our piping bag and repeat that process
for all the other colors. If you're running out of piping tips, this is a great time
just to snip the tip off. Or if you want to use a piping
tip to have more control, go ahead and use something like a six. It's a larger circle, see? See you. When we get to the piping,
I'm going to show you some really important tips that have saved my life in decorating cookies. So just hang on for that. Orange for the nose, and now we can get to decorating. So grab a comfy spot and let's go. So when you decorate your cookie, do not touch the piping tip to the cookie. It should have an edge
that just trails over. Say where your line wants
to go, follow the edge, and this is your outline consistency. And so it won't really
droop or spread very much. Okay, one outline's all done,
now flood it right away. You could let this set up for a second, but you don't really need to do that. This is where you really
wanted that larger piping tip so that it will let that icing come out. But you do not want to
overfill your cookie because if there's a critical mass of that Royal icing on top, it's going to spill out over. So use as much as you
need, but don't go crazy. And any little gaps you can
use a toothpick or a pin and just fill them in, I'll
show you what that looks like. That looks pretty good, we're
going to set this aside, but while that sets, you
can start your snowman. We're just going to outline
it and fill it up again with one color. That star's a little tricky. Oh my God, that was really bad. So it's okay if it's really
bad, you can do this. You just start over, that's okay. Things like this happen. This is the nice part
about the Royal icing. There we go, that didn't happen. What are you talking about? Done. I have to concentrate,
I can't look at you. I'm so sorry. All right, now we're going to fill this up and you can see, this is really flowy. So we just want to get it out, and if you have shaky hands like me, you can use one hand to steady yourself. Okay, this looks crazy, it looks bad. But then what you can see,
you might have seen this on the videos is use a
skewer, toothpick, or a pin, and you can just remove
any holes and even it out. There we go. You can also encourage the flooding icing closer to the edge so
you don't see that line. Put these out of the way. When they're wet, they're very endangered. So just set them aside
where you can't nudge them, or your sleeve can hit
them because that's where you get all sad. Stockings are nice and easy. We're just going to
give it a light fur top. And then one thing that you can do here is use some sanding sugar,
sprinkle that on top. So here you have a lot of
beautiful texture and sparkle and it'll hide any mistakes that happened. Once your icing sets up, you can add more colors
next to it and not worry about anything bleeding in. The green icing set up,
you can see it's nice and matte now, you can also touch it. So we're going to add some ornaments, just some simple red dots
will do amazing things. So hover above and you'll see, they really are super 3D and stand out. That looks so cute. If I dropped it, I would be so upset. Look at how cute that is, oh my gosh. I cannot wait to give these
out in little gift boxes. All right. It didn't break. My snowman set up, outline the hat, and then we're going to fill it in. Cute. And now it's time for the detail work. For this guy, I want him to have a face, a scarf, and some buttons on his body. I need three buttons. We're going to pipe a
little carrot nose too, so just put that in there. I did it. And if you want, you can just like finesse it a little bit more. I'm going to use a needle for this one. That looks cute, oh my gosh. All right, the last thing is the scarf. So he has a very short neck, but we're not going to judge him for that. He does want to stay warm. Leaving a gap, you're going to see why. We'll come back to it
with the magic of editing. This guy is so easy. So we're going to flood and
outline for my stocking. Now that the rest of the scarf is set up, I can just do a nice little
overlapping bit here. I love this Christmas tree, but snowman has to be my
favorite, look at that. You can let me know in the
comments who you love best. This one's for me. - This one's for me. - Hey. (laughing) My snowman. It tastes delicious and
it makes a perfect gift. If you liked this recipe,
check out my holiday playlist.
