Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Please help me! So my boss recruited me to help out for this Mardi Gras party at work. We will be baking sugar cookies ahead of time in the shape of masks and jester hats and whatever. As an activity at the party (yes, we're 12 and need activities to keep us occupied for an hour. I said alcohol was plenty to keep everyone occupied but my boss disagrees) my boss wants our employees to decorate their own cookies using royal icing and sprinkles. I suggested getting those squeezy gels from Stop n Shop or Michael's, but they don't harden and my boss wants the icing to harden and to make everything more difficult. I've never worked with royal icing. I know how to make it, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. The party begins at 3:30 in the afternoon and I have NO idea how to make sure the royal icing doesn't harden before the party. We usually use pastry bags for royal icing but it'll definitely harden in there. Would we be able to use like squeezy bottles? Is this feasible at all? I plan to do a test run this weekend, but I figured let me pick your brains and see if you have any suggestions. Thank you so much for actually reading this and if you have any advice, I'd really appreciate it!

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

WOW! What a picky boss... I would have also went with the squeeze bottles that you can get in the supermarket. I worked with royal icing for the first time this Christmas, and it was a bit of a mess. My main suggestion is to stick to white (but I guess you can't if it is supposed to be dark purples and greens to represent mardi gras). The red and green food coloring I used in the royal icing stained everything and I use food coloring all the time. For some reason with the royal icing it was a mess. It lasted a good 30 minutes before it hardened, I made sure to keep stirring it. but it does harden very fast. In all of my cookbooks they say make it right before its decorating time and use it as quickly as possible... so I have no idea about ways to store it. Good luck and let us know what you find out when researching and experimenting!!

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Check this out: it helped me make christmas cookies in dec

and this may help too: Bake@350

I think the easiest, cleanest thing to do is to have all of the cookies outlined and flooded prior to the party...then everyone can decorate with piped royal icing and sugar and whatnot.

im going to be trying these things out this weekend:
betty crocker squeeze bottles with the tips attached

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

my first attempt at royal icing...


it is very messy..

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Royal icing is hard to work with to begin with unless you know what you are doing. Pair that with alcohol and it's sure to be a disaster

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Thank you so much for all your replies!! I'm glad I'm not the only one to think she's being a little too picky. I was thinking of something like those squeezy bottles, too, but if it's going to harden that fast that's not going to work. Ugh, I have to talk her out of this.

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

here is a link that I have been reading:
www.universityofcookie.com

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

I did my first attempt at royal icing for Valentine's day.

Definitely use the recipes on Bake @ 350's blog. The cookies were awesome and the icing came out PERFECT!

I agree with PP who said to have the cookies outlined and flooded and then just let people add on decorations. For that, you'll need thinned royal icing. I think it will stay okay in squeeze bottles as long as you have those little red caps for it. You might want to transport the colored, thinned incing in bowls... you need to cover it with plastic wrap (have the wrap actually touching the icing) and that can be in like tupperware or whatever.

Also, use gel/paste to color the icing instead of regular food coloring and you shouldn't have problems with staining.

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

You can def keep it in a pastry bag but you need to make sure to rubber band it right above where the icing ends on the bag so that air doesn't get in it. You'll want to push all the icing down and twist it before you rubber band it. Get a glass with just a tinyyyy bit of water on the bottom, I'm talking a few drops. When you're not using the bag, put the tip of the bag in the glass so the water will keep it from drying out. Wipe the tip and squeeze a tiny bit of icing out before you decorate the cookie. You could also place a damp paper towel over the tip & secure it in place instead of the glass method.

Re: Tell me everything you know about Royal Icing

Message edited 2/17/2011 6:22:02 PM.