Royal Icing

Royal Icing

My mom and I took a cake decorating class a few years ago. We are FAR from professionals, but learned a few basics, i.e. had more fun eating our frosting creations and chatting with classmates than actually perfecting our skills. I used royal icing to make the flowers for these basic yellow cupcakes. I used frosting tips #224, #3, and #10. Like any decorated cake, these are a little time-consuming but they are really easy and will definitely spruce up your basic cupcake.

5 T. meringue powder
1 pound powdered sugar
1/3 c. cold water

Combine meringue powder and powdered sugar in a mixing bowl. Add water 1 T. at a time. Mix at a medium speed for 10 minutes. For making flowers, you want the consistency to be more stiff. Soft peaks should form.

A Note From The Little Lady: To make this frosting thinner for flooding cookies, add 1-2 T. more water and beat for 2 more minutes.

Separate and tint with food coloring as desired. Form flowers on wax paper. Let sit for 6-8 hours in order to dry and harden completely. Adhere to a freshly-frosted cake/cupcake or stick using a little frosting on the bottom of each flower.


Another Note From The LL: Royal frosting gets hard as it dries. To prevent frosting from drying out before you want it to, store frosting in airtight containers until you are ready to use, and then tie a twisty at the top of your pastry bags when decorating.

I used frosting tips #10 (for flower petals below) and #3 (for flower center).

And the opposite (#3 for petals and #10 for center) for the flower below:

The tiny blooms (in between the purple and yellow flowers below) are made using frosting tip #224. Holding frosting bag straight up and down and with decorating tip just slightly above the wax paper, squeeze out frosting and left bag straight up and away. Simple. Easy. Yet makes a cute little flower. You could make hundreds of these in a few minutes!