Rediscovering Cookie Art & Royal Icing Recipe
Recipe by | Nov 4, 2020 • 7-min read
As a kid, I’ve always wanted to bake homelike desserts that come with a seasonal and visual uniqueness. Starting off with simple cupcakes and cookies, I often dedicated more time than needed to renovating their taste and look. Being a fan of art, I sought to go the extra mile as I continue baking, whether that be hand-carving my pumpkin cake or piping dozens of mini buttercream chrysanthemums. Finding room for extra creativity never felt like enough, and I was often astonished at the fulfilling moments brought by even the subtlest change of decoration ideas.
With a simple icing dipping technique, here are the very first Christmas sugar cookies my sister and I made back in 2018...
Transitioning to college came the sudden pause of my baking activities. I barely had the essential tools with me and time to bake while abroad. Going back home with a reminiscent sense of Western desserts I’d appreciated, I wanted to bring those flavors back while embracing my artistic sense. Not until I came back to the kitchen did I realize my passion for edible art has become very much alive.
As soon as I’ve realized, nothing has given me more room for creativity than making art out of tiny royal icing sugar cookies. As I further challenge myself with perfecting the royal icing technique, I feel as if I've found my little niche.
Earlier this week, I also ventured to conduct a little cookie giveaway and survey, which has just come back with surprisingly positive feedback. That being said, I can’t wait to share with you my actual process. These shiny, adorable bites can quickly put a smile on your face, but it took me almost two weeks to eventually bring them to life.
My first serious attempt to make icing sugar cookies with piping technique this summer…
....and my latest attempt after 2-3 trials
Most online royal icing recipes with fancy cookie demos can be easy to come across, but few of them truly boils down to the common mistakes and troubleshooting tips. There are many more negligible details that, as I learned the hard way, can secretly decide your icing success. In this blog, I want to share with you a simple royal icing recipe built up from the “eureka” moments and failures I had throughout those two weeks. Though far from being an expert guide, I hope these icing tips could be of good use to anyone out there who might have stumbled upon decorated cookies and wanted not to transform their icing into another meringue batch :)
A brief note on royal icing consistency
Just as this blog is more of a troubleshooting guide, I won’t go into much detail about icing consistency classification. My go-to sugar cookie expert, CookieliciousNZ, has put together a super intuitive video on this topic, so you can check it out here. In short, you will most likely need icing of medium consistency to decorate your cookies, which provides maximum control for both outlining and flooding. If you want to go fancy with 3D decorations, stiff consistency would work best.
3D decoration flowers made with stiff consistency icing
How to make simple royal icing
For simplicity, you’ll need these 3 ingredients, which yield fairly enough icing for 20 decorated cookies depending on your cookie’s size:
- 1 egg white (pasteurized)
- 170 grams sifted granulated sugar
- ¼ tsp cream of tartar
- Optional: 1 tsp flavouring of your choice (vanilla, strawberry, etc)
The question is, should I use egg white or meringue powder? Some people prefer meringue powder as it gives an easy experience and stable results, but this powder may not be commonly available in non-Western countries. Even though egg white comes with a short shelf life and a teeny-weeny risk of getting salmonella, I’ve never got any problems or known of anyone else who has become sick from eating it. The safest way is to pasteurize the egg before using. To keep things simple, I’ll stick to regular egg white in the remaining of this blog.
Now, beating everything will do the magic, but perhaps only after you consider the tips below. Let's break down our key ways for treating each ingredient...
- Sift your sugar. Skipping this small, seemingly trivial step can hugely prevent your icing from smoothing out and create ugly floating lumps while flooding.
- Add your sugar one at a time in smaller batches. Most conventional recipes call for this step, yet it remains number one advice as you always want your sugar to mix in evenly while being able to control the current consistency.
- Help yourself out with cream of tartar. This powerful stabilizer is the key to your success, without which your icing will likely end up splitting into separate layers (due to egg white texture) after sitting over a short period. Cream of tartar also helps whiten your icing, turning its natural off-white color to pure white.
- Avoid lemon juice. I know it's tempting to combine sugar with lemon juice, as you might have realized how brilliantly they went together in your donut or pound cake glaze. However, lemon juice doesn't incorporate well with the egg whites, making your icing overly acidic when combined with cream of tartar. Excessive juice will also lead to a porous icing. Nevertheless, if you can't resist the temptation, make sure to add just a little drop of lemon juice to flavor.
- Aim for stiff consistency on your first mix. Even when you plan to make icing of medium or flood consistency, it's a good habit to make it stiff in the first place. Stiff consistency can be quicker to achieve, hence the shorter amount of time your mixer is on. This is important because the longer you mix, the more air bubbles you're introducing to your icing. Popping those bubbles by hand is non-trivial, and the last thing you want is your icing being porous.
- Mix you icing slowly by hand when watering it down. Crucial step if you’re aiming for a different consistency from what you’ve already had. Some recipes pointed out using water as the in-between lifesaver, but it can potentially cause bubbles to rise quicker if you're not mixing slowly enough. Too many bubbles will make your icing porous and unmalleable. I always wish there were an “undo” button for this frustrating case.
- Do the icing somewhere cool or at room temperature. I don’t know where you’re at, but the Vietnam summer heat and humidity have totally disheartened my vulnerable icing. Humid, high-temperature environments make it longer for the icing to harden and can potentially give it a permanent dull color. Some tips are to quickly freeze your icing multiple times after mixing/coloring or install an AC in your kitchen :)
- Using gel colors will also reduce the amount of extra water in your icing.
- Make the icing less than you think you need. It can be eye-deceiving when it comes to determining the amount of icing you should make. Your icing can be rather sweet and should only make a thin layer on top of your cookie.
- Scale up the amount of egg white and sugar proportionally. Looking to make a larger batch of this recipe? Make sure to follow this tip, as it helped me avoid the need to thicken or water down my icing as the mixture tends to quickly achieve the desired stiff consistency.
- Keep your cookies “socially distanced” while decorating. It’s so easy to bump into one cookie or another with your elbow, finger, or tools when you’re busy focusing on creating your masterpiece. Placing the cookies apart will help you save tremendous time coming back to the ruined cookies later.
Porous, runny icing that never hardens
Tips for storing your decorated cookies and leftover icing
- Keep your cookies away from the fridge. Refrigerating decorated cookies is the quickest way to lose your icing's color (only hardened icing) and flavor, plus your cookie's crunchiness.
- Load your leftover icing into piping bags for storing. Then, make sure to store these bags in an airtight container in your fridge to avoid water droplets and color degradation. This way, it's also easier to give the icing a quick mix before decorating.
Well-hardened icing
The sheer joy of decorating
It can be a lot of meticulous work, but the result would be well worth the effort. If you’re careful with not overbeating the icing and coloring, you’ll likely have a silky, fluffy, and Youtube-like royal icing ready to decorate with. As a result, you’ll find cookie decorating a lot more joyful and effortless than ever. I hope this challenging, fun activity will help you rediscover your inner playful person as it did for me :) Like how cooking at home helped people find new ways of improvising, this entire edible-art-making process has become the next best thing of quarantining to me.
More on Royal Icing
If you want to learn more about royal icing decoration tips, give it a browse or check out some of the resources I found helpful:
I hope this blog is helpful for you. If you know of anyone who loves royal icing cookies please share it around your social channel. More tips would be added as I work my way through mastering royal icing. Meanwhile, please let me know about anything you think is incorrect and needs updating. I’d be extremely grateful to hear your thoughts. Cheers!
Sources: Declared resources in the “More on Royal Icing” section above.