How To Make Perfect Royal Icing In 3 Minutes

I mentioned before that I would be sharing my recipe, plus tips + tricks for perfect royal icing, and I am just now getting around to it. Yeesh – where does the time go? I whipped these up for a Christmas dinner we went to and although these snowflakes are probably the only snow I’ll be enjoying here in Hawaii, I know my friends across the country have been getting hammered by Mother Nature! I love seeing all the snow pics, so if you’re one of those people enjoying the fluffy white stuff (THAT FALLS FROM THE SKY), keep posting 🙂 Anyway, some of you might be wondering – WHAT THE HELL IS ROYAL ICING?! Basically, it’s the pretty icing you see on cookies that doesn’t smear when you touch it. It crusts over on the outside, but stays nice and soft on the inside, so when you bite into it, you don’t break a tooth. I love using it for pretty parties and special occasions (like holidays), but I’ll be totally transparent…it often makes my hands cramp up halfway through and I’m left wondering…why did I decide to do this again?! In any case, today I’m sharing my secrets for how to make perfect royal icing in 3 minutes. Let’s get started!

How To Make Perfect Royal Icing In 3 Minutes

This is my go-to recipe for royal icing any time I make it and it has yet to fail me. I will say that there area few tips I have for working with it once you’ve gotten it made, so look out for those down below. Lots of recipes I’ve seen call for meringue powder, but I’ll be honest – I’ve never had luck with it. It either sets up too quickly or is too runny despite my very best efforts. The recipe I’m sharing is a winner, I promise!

To create my royal icing in your own house, you will need:

2 cups + 1 tsp. confectioner’s sugar

1 large egg white

1/2 tsp. water

1. Using an electric mixer (I use my hand mixer, because my stand up KitchenAid is too large for the job unless I’m making a ton of icing!), whip your egg white until slightly frothy.

2. Add in water and sugar.

3. Mix until smooth.

If you choose to make it another color other than white, now is the time to mix it in! I use these color gels, because the color is just SO vibrant and a little bit of gel goes a really long way. Just make sure it’s thoroughly mixed, which will probably take scraping the bowl with a spatula a time or two.

To decorate, I use these bags (super easy clean up) and a variety of icing tips to achieve the look I want. Now that I’ve gotten the recipe out of the way, let’s talk about a few tips for decorating!

I think royal icing is intimidating to a lot of people, because they have this idea in their head about it hardening right away, so they rush through making it and getting it onto their cookies immediately with less-than-stellar results. First things first – take a breath. It’s not going to harden up on you in an instant.

Sometimes when I first make the icing, I even let it breathe for about 5 minutes, allowing it to get less runny before I attempt to decorate with it. This way, it doesn’t run all over the cookie outside of the design I want to do.

For cookies that you want to be entirely covered in icing, it’s best to do an outline the entire way around the cookie in the shape you want and then fill it in.

The best set I’ve found for delicate designs, the outline of cookies and letters is this one.