Hayley Evans from Temper & Tipsy has kindly joined us to offer a little more help and advice in the form of her top 5 tips for using royal icing.
Top 5 tips for royal icing
Don’t risk with a whisk
When beating your royal icing, always use the paddle attachment of your mixer, never the whisk, as this adds too much air to your icing and will cause it to become too stiff.
Slow and steady wins the race
Never beat your royal icing at any speed other than the lowest setting on your mixer. Beating too fast will add too much air to your icing and again produce a product that is unworkable and much too stiff.
Don’t cause a flood – add water drop by drop
Your royal icing will come out of the mixer at a stiff peak consistency, which is perfect for covering cakes when combined with glycerine. You can ‘knock down’ the icing by adding water to create either soft peak for piping or run out consistency for flooding; the latter technique can be seen on my Rocket Cookies in Baking Heaven. Ensure you add the water one drop at a time until you reach your desired consistency. You can always add more to get it just right, but you can never take it away.
Never forget to use liquid for flooding
Gel colours contain glycerine, which will prevent your run-outs from setting hard when used to flood a design and will, therefore, make them more liable to break. Always colour run out royal icing with liquid colours to avoid this.
Give your flooded designs that sunkissed look
If you want to achieve a lovely sheen on your run out design, as opposed to a matt finish, then place them to dry under a lamp. You will find they dry with a gloss finish that will set off your designs beautifully.
These tips were originally written by Hayley Evans from Temper & Tipsy in 2013. Find more tips and advice here.
