Royal Icing Transfers 101: Tips and Tricks for Picture-Perfect Results

hey sweet friends welcome to this tutorial on royal icing transfers in this video I'm going to show you how to make beautiful and intricate royal icing transfers that you can use to decorate your cookies cakes Cupcakes and really any type of baked good royal icing transfers really are a great way to add some personality and Flair to your cookies and they're also really easy to make once you get the hang of it so today we are going to talk about how I made these rainbow royal icing transfers that I used for two different rainbow cookie sets but even though this video is specifically about these rainbow royal icing transfers hang around because what you learned in this video can be applied to any other kind of royal icing transfer okay so without further Ado let's get going welcome to rock sitting cookies where we talk about all things cookies if you're new to the channel hit that subscribe button and click Bell icon to be notified when we upload a new video thanks for watching as we get started let me tell you a little bit about what royal icing transfers are so royal icing transfers are essentially like small decorations that you pipe out of royal icing onto a flat surface like a sheet of paper you cover that sheet of paper with a special protector which we will talk about in just a second and then you can transfer these decorations onto your baked goods which here we're specifically talking about cookies but again it can be any sort of baked goods to create some really cute designs the possibilities really are endless with royal icing transfers as you can create anything from the rainbows that you see me working on here today to flowers to intricate patterns to food to characters really anything that you are working on you can find a royal icing transfer to complement that design now let's talk about the supplies that you'll need to make royal icing transfers first off obviously you'll need some realizing now I recommend using a thick royal icing you can use a medium consistency royal icing that really needs to be on the thicker side as this will hold its shape better and make it easier to pipe your transfers and you'll also need a Piping Bag and if you use tips a piping tip now I personally prefer to use tipless bags which means that I cut a pretty small hole into my piping bags for royal icing transfers just because the designs are so detailed now it kind of depends on what kind of royal icing transfer you're doing on what size piping tip that you will need for these rainbow stripes for the colors I do recommend a very small piping tip so I would do a zero if you have a zero or even a double zero but if you don't a one will work just make sure your icing is thick however I think it's safe to say that I would probably never use anything bigger than a size 1 piping tip for most royal icing transfers and of course if you're using tipless bags I always recommend cutting a smaller hole first because you can always cut a larger hole you can never go backwards you'd have to re-bag your icing to get a smaller hole so kind of err on the side of trying a smaller hole first if you need to cut bigger you can always cut your bag bigger at that point in time Additionally you will need a flat surface to pipe your transfers onto make sure it's flat it's very very important that you are doing all of your work on a completely flat surface next you will need a template of some sort now you can absolutely freehand transfers and do this exact process without a template just by using your eye I have done that many many times and just try to get all of my designs as uniform as I can without a template you are more than welcome to follow this process without using a template but if you already have a template one that you have made or purchased make sure you have that printed out in advance just on a regular computer paper that's eight and a half by eleven and you will need some sort of protective covering over your piece of paper this covering is actually what you will be piping your designs directly onto this is what your roll icing will go on to to dry so I recommend using acetate that's what I'm using in this video and I will link it in the description box below the reason why I use acetate is for a couple reasons one it's the exact size of an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper it's thicker and more durable and it's extremely easy to wash and sanitize for reuse over and over and over again or you can use wax paper parchment paper or I have even seen that people will print their design onto a piece of white cardstock and then they will laminate that cardstock and then they can wipe off that surface and reuse it over and over and over again I do recommend using cardstock though to laminate and not just regular computer paper simply because the cardstock is heavy enough that when you laminate it it'll stay flat it'll stay a flat surface whereas sometimes when you laminate just regular computer paper it can kind of curve a little bit or it's not quite as sturdy and when you have royal icing transfers it's really important that they stay flat the entire time that they're drying or they will crack and break on you so that's why I recommend if you are going to laminate which is a great great option if you are going to do that just make sure you're doing it with a piece of white card stock instead of just computer paper now when I first started experimenting with royal icing transfers I did use parchment paper because it is what I had on hand right here at my house and it does work it's thin enough that you can still see a transfer sheet underneath it if you were using that to help guide your piping and your icing will dry on those surfaces but just be advised that it will take your icing longer to dry on parchment paper or wax paper than it does acetate and I recommend tape being down the wax paper or the parchment paper either onto a baking pan or onto a table or something so that it doesn't move while you're working or while it's drying because it tends to kind of want to Bubble Up it doesn't stay completely flat I have found wax paper and parchment paper they don't stay completely flat so you want to make sure that you have it taped somewhere so that the paper stays completely flat while it's drying okay now that you know everything that you need to start making your royal icing transfers you'll just want to prepare your Surface by covering it with whatever cover of your choice that we just talked about and then if you're using a template you can place it underneath your cover to help you guide your piping that's all that a template is it just is helping you to have consistent sizing it helps you to know exactly where your icing needs to go and it just keeps everything nice and tidy for you that's really all a template is so if you want to do that on your own you're more than welcome if you want to use your project sector to do that you're more than welcome you do not have to have a transfer template it just makes life a little bit easier if you do and then you just grab your Piping Bag and you get to work piping your designs just remember again make that icing thick so that it keeps its shape it maintains the design the details that you're working so hard to create you don't want to lose that because you have too thin of icing and honestly my very very very favorite part about using royal icing transfers is that if you make a mistake if your icing's too thin if you mess up on a transfer sheet it is no big deal you can just wipe it off you can just grab a whole different sheet of acetate or wax paper or whatever you're using you can start over so easy whereas when you are piping directly onto your cookie you don't have that luxury mess-ups are a big deal when you're piping directly onto a cookie so with royal icing transfers you can take away that pressure you can pick your best wants to put on your cookies you're not doing your work directly onto your cookie you're free to make mistakes and it's not a big deal Hallelujah now in this particular video I am showing you how I made rainbow transfers and the colors I used were red orange yellow green blue and purple royal icing and I followed the outline guide and just made arches of each color in Rainbow order so instead of doing one rainbow at a time though which meant that I would have just been picking up each royal icing bag over and over and over and over again I decided I thought it would be faster just to do all of the rainbows and one color first so I did all of my red and then I piped all of the orange all of the yellow all of the green all of the blue and finally all of the purple and I did find it easier to pipe The Arches by turning the rainbows upside down and piping a u-shape instead of an arch I don't know why but my hand just flowed better by doing a U than by doing an arch that's the process that I found worked best for me so you can do whichever works best for you but I did want to explain why I turned the rainbows upside down now remember you're doing thick icing so you want to be doing all of this work back to back there is no you don't have to take breaks to let things dry you'll do all of your colors back to back and then after you do all of the rainbow colors then you will do the clouds directly onto the rainbow you want to make sure your clouds are touching your rainbows so that when they dry all of that icing will dry together as one unit if you have icing that's not touching in your Rainbow roll icing transfers or just any roll icing transfer it won't when it pops off and you're ready to put it onto your design it will break your icing has to be all touching it has to be all connected or you will not have a usable roll icing transfer so just make sure that when you're doing multiple colors in different sections that you do have some overlapping icing just so that it stays together now I'm not going to lie to you piping roll icing transfers is not easy you're using thick icing you're doing small air areas of icing it's not going to be easy on your hands my fingers are always killing me when I'm done however you don't have to do an entire sheet of transfers you only have to do as many as you need but in saying that always always always create more transfers than you think that you'll need because you will have some that break so while you may not have to do an entire page do allow yourself to make extra so that you aren't in a bind later if you do have several break on you since they take hours to dry it's not like you can just make a few more real quick you can but you'll have to wait again for them to dry again so just make sure that you save yourself some sanity later make extras because I've never made royal icing transfers and not have at least a couple breaks so just keep that in mind when you are doing them you may not have to do a whole sheet of whatever design that you're doing but you definitely want to make some extras on top of what you need okay once you've piped all of your designs you'll have to let them dry completely and this can take anywhere from a few hours to overnight depending on the humidity and the thickness of your transfers once your transfers are dry you can gently remove them from whatever surface that you picked to do your transfers onto and I know you're saying but Rachel how do I know that my transfers are dry well you know because they will easily pop off of whatever surface you piped them onto so on your acetate you can just use your nail and just kind of pick at it and see if it pops off easily off of your acetate same thing with the wax paper the parchment paper the laminate if it comes off very easily then it's done now if you have to work at it or if it really is not wanting to pop off it needs to dry a little bit more now to remove my transfers from this acetate I prefer to pick up the acetate and I have one hand underneath the acetate and then I with my other hand I'm just kind of really just able to push all the transfers off of the acetate that's how easy they come off when they're completely dry you don't have to work for it at all they just pop right off and once they are done let's talk about how you can store them so if you are using them right away for whatever set you're decorating right then you could just put them in a bowl and put them on your table that way you have easy access to them whenever you're ready to decorate with them which is what I did for this video but if you have extras that you want to save or if you are just making batches of royal icing transfers that you can pull out and use kind of like sprinkles some people make them and they store them with their sprinkles so that they have them for all different kinds of sets then all you need is just an airtight container of some sort I have seen cookies use little craft containers that where it's like a rectangle box but it's divided into lots of different sections I have seen them use that for royal icing transfers which is a fantastic idea but storing them for reuse is great because they have such a high sugar bigger content that they last a really long time so you don't have to worry about them going bad quickly you can do the work now and save them for later for when you have another set with a similar theme now when it's time to decorate your cookies or your cupcakes or your cakes whatever using your royal icing transfer for it's really easy to attach the transfer to them with a small amount of icing on the back of your roll icing transfer you'll need to use thick icing I prefer to use white just so that it kind of doesn't you can't see the color behind the royal icing transfer very well if you're using a neutral color but any thick icing will do just don't overfill it you'll attach it to the back and that icing when it dries it will act like glue and it will hold your transfer in place and that's it with a little bit of practice and patience you'll be able to create stunning and intricate royal icing transfers that really will take whatever baked good that you are doing this for to the next level now I did quickly want to share with you how I used my roll icing transfers these rainbows for the sets that I was working on so I had two different rainbow sets so they were similar but they were different but I still used kind of the same base colors all of the red orange yellow green blue and purple were the same they're just two different designs so I was still able to use these roll icing transfers for both sets but you can see here all the different ways I used them for this set I kind of just put them on the balloons I used them on the rainbows themselves I use them for the birthday girls initial the birthday girls number so there's just really an endless amount of ways that you can use your transfers for your sets they can just be that little extra detail they can be a part of the main design just however you want to use them the options really are endless and it really did just Elevate that cookie just a little bit that it would have been missing something if it wasn't there so I highly recommend if you would like to add just a little bit of texture just a little bit of more detail just a little bit of something to start experimenting with royal icing transfers oh and I did want to recommend I actually used my roll icing transfers the ones that I had left over as part of my decorations in my pictures so you can always do that too you can use whatever you have left to kind of help Jazz up your pictures for your sets as well so I wanted to throw out that recommendation too don't forget to check out our Etsy Shop Rock City cookies it will be linked in the description box below or you can go to Etsy and search for Rock City cookies not only is this rainbow transfer sheet listed there there are others listed as well and I will be adding more every single week but if you are a patreon member or a royal icing royalty member which is on YouTube if you are one of those which is the 4.99 five dollar level of membership that is per month five dollars per month then that gets you access to our private Facebook group which will have every single whirl icing transfer sheet that I make it will go on there for free so if you are at that level of membership that is one of the benefits is that you get access to all the royal icing transfer sheets without having to pay for them otherwise you can purchase them individually on Etsy alright friends thank you so so much for watching today I hope this was helpful happy decorating and I will see you soon bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you

Channel: Rock City Cookies

Views: 7,943

Keywords: rock city cookies, sugar cookie tutorials, royal icing, how to decorate cookies, royal icing transfers, rainbow sugar cookies, rainbow royal icing transfers, how to make royal icing transfers, what to use for royal icing transfers, tips and tricks for using royal icing transfers, sugar cookie decorating tips and tricks, how to be a sugar cookie decorator, rainbow transfers, royal icing troubleshooting, how to create beautiful sugar cookies, sugar cookie decorating tips

Id: SHCL5Wp91Ws

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023