Welcome to stenciling with royal icing
from The Cookie Countess. In today's video I'm going to show you how to
easily stencil with royal icing onto a cookie. You're going to start with a
stencil. You want to pick one that fits nicely inside your cookie shape, you also
will need some royal icing. Now, you'll notice the royal icing is pretty stiff
it's definitely stiffer than a flood icing and it's still a little stiffer
than your piping icing might be. It's similar to what you would use to pipe flowers or
something like; that so pay attention to your icing consistency. You'll need a
spatula and you'll also need a scraper, this is a Cookie Countess Stencil Scraper,
to remove the excess icing off of cookie. It also helps to have your cookie as
flat as you can get it, this one has been flooded with royal icing, but you could also do this on a cookie that was covered in fondant. Next you're going to want something
that can hold the stencil in place either magnets or the Stencil Genie
frame. For this first section I'm going to use the Stencil Genie. So you'll
notice in the four corners of the Genie are little magnets built in, this is
going to hold your stencil in place so you just pop it in and put the second part
of the frame on top. Now I'm going to place this over my cookie I'm also using a
little non-slip round here [Minimat] because I'm working on a baking sheet that could
be a little slippery, so this way the cookie doesn't slide out from underneath
me. Once you have your stencil centered where you want it you're going to pick up a good amount of icing, you don't want to try to skimp on the icing. You'll notice
as I'm laying the icing down I'm definitely using more than I need, and
when I'm doing this I'm really just thinking about gluing the stencil
to the cookie with the icing. I'm not pressing down too hard and I'm
definitely leaving behind a lot more than I need. Now, I'm going to go back in and scrape with my scraper. It's best if you can try to go in one direction if the
stencil you're using has any directional pieces like this has some horizontal
lines stay scraping in that horizontal motion
and then any excess icing you pick up with your scraper you can scrape right
back into the bowl to reuse. Once you start to see the design come through you can stop and pull your stencil off be careful to pull it off, not to smudge
it, and you'll be left behind with this really nice crisp image from your
stencil. Next I want to show you how to do it using magnets. Here's a
different view, what I'm using is a set of a dozen magnets. I'm going to stack two of these magnets - these are about a quarter inch high. I'm stacking two in each corner, laying my stencil on top and then I'm putting one magnet on
top. And this is again because you'll note I'm working on a cookie sheet,
all this is f anchored down onto the cookie sheet. So this is another
option you can use to hold your stencil in place. You can also just hold the
stencil with your hand and hope for the best [laughing] but it is great to have something else that can hold it down for you. Here you can see again I'm using
definitely a lot of icing and more than I need but I'm not scraping down to the
level of the cookie just yet. I'm just getting icing over all the openings and
now I'm going to start to pull across with the scraper and it's nice to do this
with a big wide scraper like this because then you won't have any track
marks coming through the image, so the image will look nice and even.
Then carefully remove the top magnets and then you can peel the stencil off.
It's really fast way to decorate; if you are piping these words certainly it
takes a lot longer and I know my piping skills are not that good. So now I want
to show you some common mistakes. Here is a more of a flood consistency icing, and when people start out sometimes they don't realize that you need a stiffer
icing, so what happens when you use a really thin icing is that it immediately
seeps right under the stencil that's all, and it's hard to keep
it in one place when you scrape. It is even smashing it down underneath that
stencil even more so when I peel away the stencil you're
going to see that the letters are definitely mushed and the icing
got underneath. It does not look very clean, especially when you compare it to
our original cookie. So remember the consistency makes a big difference - icing
too thin you're going to end up with it seeping underneath. Here's another
example of some icing that maybe is a little too thick or when you use too
little icing. I also see some beginners doing this where they only put
a little bit down [of icing] and then they try really hard to just use that little bit
of icing and keep scraping it across the cookie and what happens here is that you
end up pushing the stiff icing underneath the stencil again. So you're
going to get that same bleeding as you did with the thin icing. Also, it's drying so
quickly as you push it around you end up with dry marks on it so you can
see here once again it's not very crisp and it has smudged underneath. So - not too thick and not too thin - you want to definitely find that right consistency
for stenciling. Once you get the hang of it it's really
quite easy and you can do a lot of cookies at once! So here's the examples
of our failed stenciling that we did, and now I'm going to show you the
finished product that looks so nice. With a little practice you can be an expert
at stenciling with royal icing just remember you need the right consistency
and a few tools and you'll be on your way. Thanks for watching this video and
have a great day!
