I baked 455 gingerbread cookies for my office mates for Christmas a couple of years ago. I wanted to do a colored royal icing. I got Wilton paste colors and tinted what was (when made in white) a VERY dependable royal recipe.
The icing turned to DUST! I couldn’t touch the icing or stack the cookies without the royal disintegrating on contact. I saved the cookies by scraping off the royal which left traces of coloor (but not 3 dimensional texture) on the cookies. They still tasted great - Nick Malgeri’s Gingerbread recipe works every time.
Has anyone successfully made tinted royal icing? If not, I’m sticking to white. TIA.
I haven’t made it but I know it is possible because that is what is used on wedding cakes over here(The UK) more often than fondant . I have a beautiful corsage of flowers made of Royal icing which is off the top of my son’s wedding cake, it will keep for ever if not broken!
In Rose’s book, “Rose’s Christmas Cookies,” there is a recipe for royal icing which I have used several times. I tint it using paste colors, and I have never had a problem with it. Good luck!
What is the difference between royal icing and ‘another icing’?? Reason I am asking is becuase I hear that it gets really hard and how can you eat a cookie thats hard?? The recipe that I got gets hard enough to stack the cookies, but still tastes good and soft..
Royal icing basically consists of powdered sugar and egg white. (I add lemon extract to mask the flavor of the egg.)
Regular powdered-sugar icing consists of powdered sugar, butter and milk. It will dry somewhat and get a crust, but it won’t dry as hard as royal icing.
Since I only use a thin coat of royal icing to decorate gingerbread cookies, hardness is not an issue. They are perfectly delicious to eat, and they can be stacked without ruining the icing once they are dry.
However, if you want to use a butter-powdered sugar icing, go ahead. The icing will be softer and you can pipe higher, more 3-dimensional designs than you can with the kind of royal icing I use. However, you cannot stack this kind of cookie since the icing will still be soft in the middle.
Hi, I did a corporate order of cookies for a client at Christmas and among the variety of cookies was a bag of mini gingerbread cookies. I had a lot of really small cookie cutters so I decided to do Gingerbread Animal Crackers and there were about 20 per bag. I thought that the cookie shapes would be cute enough but they were flat looking and needed something. So I ended up icing some details on each cookie (what a job!!) with Royal icing. It held up, got stiff but was not brittle, and I used lemon juice to provide some flavor. I used a recipe from Toba Garretts Cookie book which I have used many times before, used gel coloring and never had a problem. I have used royal icing as a boarder icing on cookies and a flood icing to fill in the cookies. The flood icing recipe is also from Toba Garretts book and is fantastic because it dries to a wonderful shine, takes color beautifully and tastes very good. The only drawback is that the flood icing takes a while to dry but once it is dry the cookies can be stacked without a problem. Your crumbling problem is a real mystery since that usually happens when Royal icing is very old.
I’m stumped as to what made the royal so crumbly. The texture was beautiful when I applied it to the cookies. I think I should just stick to white royal for cookies but I appreciate all the input!
Chiffonade:
I use colored royal icing on cookies all the time…never ever had that problem. I use a paste food coloring that I get in NY at a place called New York Cake and Baking. It has their own label on it. (It is more like a gel, in texture, but it is very intensely colored, just like paste. I’ve used it on christmas cookies and have tinted it very dark green…with no alteration in the texture or taste of the icing. I agree with patrincia, grease is probably the problem, perhaps the wilton coloring has some oil in it? (Not sure about this). I think that New York Cake and Baking will ship anywhere…(Be aware that the people who work there are not very nice…be patient if you call on the phone….they are worth putting up with because they have everything). (By the way, I’m assuming that your recipe for royal icing is the usual egg white and confectioner’s sugar…etc).
Was the paste brand-new? My cake decorating instructor warned us in class about not double-dipping any utensil into the pot that had come into contact with icing or whatever we were coloring - if the paste was old, maybe it had some grease in it if you’d ever double-dipped?
Chiffonade:
I use colored royal icing on cookies all the time…never ever had that problem. I use a paste food coloring that I get in NY at a place called New York Cake and Baking. It has their own label on it. (It is more like a gel, in texture, but it is very intensely colored, just like paste. I’ve used it on christmas cookies and have tinted it very dark green…with no alteration in the texture or taste of the icing. I agree with patrincia, grease is probably the problem, perhaps the wilton coloring has some oil in it? (Not sure about this). I think that New York Cake and Baking will ship anywhere…(Be aware that the people who work there are not very nice…be patient if you call on the phone….they are worth putting up with because they have everything). (By the way, I’m assuming that your recipe for royal icing is the usual egg white and confectioner’s sugar…etc).
Thanks for the tip. I’m sure I can order some online and spare myself the “gruff” employees. They must be related to the people who owned Bridge Kitchen. Mr. Bridge was a notorious curmudgeon.
I haven’t made it but I know it is possible because that is what is used on wedding cakes over here(The UK) more often than fondant . I have a beautiful corsage of flowers made of Royal icing which is off the top of my son’s wedding cake, it will keep for ever if not broken!
That sounds more like gum paste than royal icing. Those flowers are gorgeous - making them is a real art.
