Royal Icing for Cookies

Royal Icing is a hard white icing made from softly beaten egg white, icing sugar and vanilla essence for flavor, sometimes lemon juice is also used.

Royal icing mostly just tastes like sugar. We normally find this icing on gingerbread men cookies, Christmas cookies, Christmas cakes, wedding cakes etc.., Though the original recipe calls for egg whites, meringue powder can also be used as a substitute.

The recipe I have shared today can be used on Gingerbread cookies, houses which needs a flowy, thick consistency. If you are looking for a royal icing on cakes, that needs some more powdered sugar to be added to get the thicker consistency.

The original royal icing recipe calls for raw egg whites. As the raw egg might contain germ, Salmonella I have shown a method to warm the egg white before adding the icing sugar. If you are happy with using raw egg whites, skip this step.

The prepared royal icing can be stored in an airtight container with a cling wrap touching it’s surface or in an airtight bag by squeezing the air out and closing it. It doesn’t get spoiled as it has high quantity of sugar in it. It can be stored in room temperature for many weeks though it is always good to use anything prepared within a week.

I have shown and explained everything very clear in the pictures below. Please go through the step-by-step pictures carefully and make the icing at home and enjoy the cookies❤

INGREDIENTS

  • Egg white- 3 ( 120 gms.)
  • Icing sugar- 3 cups( 345 gms.), sifted
  • Vanilla essence- 1 tsp

PROCEDURE

If you are happy to use raw egg white, skip the below process of heating egg white. You can add the raw egg white directly to icing sugar and essence.

Place a glass bowl over a steam on a saucepan with simmering water. The bottom of the glass bowl should not touch the surface of water. Take care about this.
Now add the egg whites to the glass bowl. We are going to warm it up slightly from 2 to 3 minutes by whisking continuously.
Continous whisking is needed. Just the egg white should be warmed up.
Now let it chill down a bit for 2 minutes. Continous whisking is needed now too. Do not leave it without whisking.
Whisking continous helps to prevent the egg white getting cooked in traces by chance when standing still as it is little warm.
Once it has chilled a bit, transfer it to a big bowl. Start beating the egg white till it turns frothy using an electric hand beater. Start from low speed to high.
Then move the speed of the electric hand beater to low and add the icing sugar little by little from the side. Keep the beating process.
Add 1 tsp of vanilla essence inbetween.
Now add the rest icing sugar little-by-little from the side keeping the speed of the electric hand beater in low.
Now beat in high speed till it thickens and in flowy consistency.
This is the desired consistency. It is thick, shiny and flowy. This consistency is for flooding the cookies. If you want it for writing on cookies, add some more icing sugar and make it thick.
Now transfer the icing sugar to a piping bag.
Start the icing process as you need. See the icing is shiny.
How to check the right consistency to pipe on cookies? You should be able to draw a line between two points without breaking. When you are filling certain large areas in cookies, it should spread evenly and level itself.
It will take 40 minutes for the icing to get hard but it takes hours for the icing to get dried completely.

TIPS

  • Any food color can be added to the white icing prepared. Add the food color, beat it again, bring it to the right consistency and use it.
  • Stand mixer can be used too to prepare icing