Onecolorful glazeIt may look pretty on your Christmas cookies, but a lot can go wrong when decorating with royal icing. We reveal the most common egg white icing mistakes and how to avoid them. Use our tips to decorate your homemade cookies like a pro!
1. Royal icing becomes too thick
You should whip the glaze on the lowest setting of your mixer. If you prepare the egg white icing on high, you will incorporate too much air into the mixture. As a result, the glaze becomes too solid and the thread breaks when piping. This can also happen if you beat the egg whites for too long. In principle, 5 minutes is enough.
What to do? If the royal icing becomes too solid, you can also mix in some egg white. Then stir the glaze for a few more minutes until the desired consistency is achieved.
2. Royal icing becomes too runny
Have you been stirring your egg white icing for longer than 5 minutes but it doesn't get stiff? If the consistency of the royal icing is too runny, it will meltDecorating the cookies. One reason for this could be the wrong quantities in the recipe.
What to do? In this case, only one thing can help: Mix in a little more powdered sugar and stir the icing to a firmer consistency.
*If you want to decorate cookies using the flooding method, the egg white icing needs to be a little runnier. Read more about it below.
3. Do not mix food coloring well
Do you want beautiful and colorful cookies? Then it's better to color the homemade egg white icing with food coloring instead of buying ready-made mixtures. However, if the color is not mixed well, unsightly streaks will appear in the glaze.
What to do about it? It is best to use food coloring in the form of gel or paste and mix the color well in the icing.
4. Ignore air bubbles
What starts as a tiny air bubble can quickly become a catastrophic dent in your royal icing if you don't catch it in time.
What to do? To avoid these annoying problem spots, after decorating, lightly tap the cookie on a flat surface to bring the air bubbles to the surface. Then use a toothpick to gently pop each bubble and mix it into the rest of the frosting.
5. Do not color white royal icing
Decorated cookies are aClassics for the Christmas season. And if you decide on motifs like snowflakes, then the glaze shouldn't be colored, right? But! Royal icing looks bright white immediately after stirring, but when it dries, the color becomes more of a grayish white.
What to do? If you need a pure white icing to decorate cookies, stir in 1-2 drops of blue food coloring.
6. Flooding cookies without outlines
Flooding is perhaps the most popular decorating method when it comes to royal icing. The surface of a cookie is completely covered with a thin layer of icing. The egg white icing must have a flowing consistency and can flow down quickly without a border.
What to do? To properly flood your cookies, you must first apply what is known as outlining. To do this, cut the cookies first with onevery fine nozzleand outline it with a firmer glaze and only then fill it with the more liquid glaze. If you skip this step your royal icing will run down.
7. Forgot to sift the powdered sugar
This is most likely why your spouts keep clogging. If you don't sift the powdered sugar thoroughly when stirring it into the royal icing, lumps will form. This makes it difficult to decorate the cookies and makes the end result look unsightly.
What to do? Seven, seven, seven!
8. Using too much royal icing
The fact that you can never get enough of something good doesn't apply when it comes to royal icing. Using too much egg white icing will never make your homemade cookies look perfect.
What to do? Avoid the urge to pile up your icing and instead create a very thin layer. This way the best results are achieved.
9. Not letting the glaze dry long enough
Have you decorated your cookies beautifully, but after a while the colors diverge and your beautiful motif turns into a colorful blob? Then you may have removed the cookies from the cake rack too early.
What to do? Make sure you give your icing enough time to harden before removing the cookies from the rack and placing them in a container. By enough time, we mean at least 24 hours of continuous air drying to ensure the decoration stays perfect. If you want to speed up the process, you can place the cookies under a fan (on the lowest setting) to help the icing harden faster.
