Egg White Royal Icing Recipe

Royal Icing is the icing that dries hard for cookie decorating. I usually make my Royal Icing with Meringue Powder. But sometimes I'll get questions about making royal icing with egg whites instead of the powdered version.

So, I made some with egg whites for these gingerbread houses. It's really quite easy, you just want to be sure you don't use the egg whites raw, to avoid any potential for food poisoning.

What You Need
3-4 egg whites (about 1/2 cup)
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
4-5 cups powdered sugar

Combine the egg whites and the granulated sugar in a heatproof mixing bowl, being careful to keep any yolk or other grease from coming into contact with the whites. (Grease makes royal icing melt, and not set up correctly.)
Set the bowl over simmering water, and whisk constantly until the egg whites reach the food-safe temperature of 160-degrees. (Be careful to keep the heat low, or the whites can cook.)

Remove from the heat, and set aside for about 15 minutes or until whites are just lukewarm, not hot.
Add 4 cups of powdered sugar. Mix on high speed with a hand or stand mixer for 4-5 minutes or until stiff peaks form. If icing seems runny, and won't form a stiff peak, try adding another 1 cup of sugar. (If it requires more than one more cup, you may have gotten grease in the icing, and it won't set up, regardless of how much sugar you add.)

I don't recommend using pasteurized egg whites. When I tried this, they would not mix up, even with 8 (EIGHT!) cups of sugar added, about 15 minutes of whipping... and the icing smelled bad in the end.
Compare this photo above with the one above it... you can see the difference.

Store royal icing in an airtight container. (I usually store it in zipper baggies so that no air comes into contact with it.)

*Note: I'm having some of the white icing turn yellow in the sunlight... I will update if/when I figure out a cause. In the meantime, if you need it to stay white, you may try white icing coloring or just be sure to keep it out of the sunlight.

Click the Links Below to See:
Royal Icing Recipe and Tips
Royal Icing Consistency
Cookie Decorating Ideas
Gingerbread House Recipe and Tips

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Homemade Gingerbread House {Recipe}

We love decorating gingerbread houses at our house. But admittedly, I'd never made them from scratch before this season. I was sure my awesomely soft Gingerbread Recipe wouldn't hold up the decorations, and I don't usually eat the houses, anyway.

Graham crackers and store-bought kits worked well enough for us. Now I know. Totally worth it, making our own. Though I did have to add a lot more flour to get the dough stiff enough to hold up.

What You Need:
For the house pieces:
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup molasses
5 - 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

For the Icing:
1 lb. powdered sugar (about 3 1/2 - 4 cups) 
1-2 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbsp. meringue powder
1/3 cup water

(See my Egg White Royal Icing Recipe if you don't have meringue powder.)

For the Decorations:
Cereal: Fruit Loops, Trix, Golden Grahams, Frosted Mini Wheats
Candy: Gum Drops, Mini Candy Canes, Mints, Gumballs, Cotton Candy
Teddy Grahams or Gingerbread Men Cookies

Make the Dough

Combine sugar, shortening and butter in a mixer bowl until light and fluffy.
Add eggs. Mix to combine.
Add molasses. Mix to combine.

In a separate bowl, whisk together 4 1/2 cups of the flour, the salt, spices and baking soda.

Add flour mixture to molasses mixture in three or four additions. Mix until completely blended each time.

Remove the dough from the bowl, and knead until the dough sticks together. Adding as much as a cup of  flour as you go. Wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Roll the dough to about 1/4" thick on a floured piece of parchment paper. (This is about twice as thick as I usually roll my cookies. I used a Sharpie marker for an approximate thickness.)

If you have a gingerbread house cutter, use those. (I received the one you see above as a gift, but I've also bought some from a craft store this season.)

If you do not have a cutter, you can find a simple template to cut with a knife and a ruler here.

Remove the cutter and the dough between the pieces... trying not to move the gingerbread house pieces. It's too hard to keep the large pieces straight.
Place the parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
Place the cookie sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes. (Preheat the oven to 350-degrees (F) while the cookies are in the freezer.

If you want to add "stained glass" to the cookies, crush some hard candies, like Jolly Ranchers, and place the pieces in the cut-outs. Bake for 10 minutes at 350-degrees (F).

Cool completely on the cookie sheet. The candy takes a while to cool. Be careful not to move it.

When the cookies have cooled completely, straighten the edges with a microplane grater or using a bread knife to file the rounded edges down.

Use Royal Icing as glue to assemble the house. If you made stained glass, you may want to spread some white icing on the back of the windows so that you can see them when the house is assembled.
Another idea I had for the stained glass was to place a battery-operated votive candle inside, but I didn't get a chance to make that happen this year.

I recommend allowing the base of the house to dry for about 30 minutes before adding the roof.
Then, you can decorate with you favorite candy, cereal, or whatever you wish!

Click here to see my Gingerbread House Decorating Tips and Tricks.

Click the Links Below to See:
Meringue Powder Royal Icing Recipe
Egg White Royal Icing Recipe
Gingerbread Men Cookie Recipe
Other Cookie Decorating Ideas

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Royal Icing Recipe

Royal icing is the awesome, hard-drying icing you see on all of the most awesome cookies out there. I have been working for months (literally) to get the recipe just right, so here it is.

What You Need:
Vinegar or lemon juice to wipe down equipment
1 lb. powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. meringue powder
1/3 cup water
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1-2 tsp. clear vanilla flavoring (or other flavoring of your choice)

(Click here for a Royal Icing Recipe using Egg Whites instead of Meringue Powder.)

Begin by wiping down all of the tools you will use with your icing (bowl, spatula, beaters, measuring cups/spoons, etc.) with a paper towel dampened with white vinegar or lemon juice. This will help remove all of the grease. Grease is the mortal enemy of royal icing. It will cause it to never dry completely... making you crazy in the process.

Measure powdered sugar. (preferably by weight. If you don't have a kitchen scale, approx. 3 1/2 -4 cups of powdered sugar will do.)

In the bowl of a mixer, combine the powdered sugar and the meringue powder.

Add the corn syrup and the flavoring to the 1/3 cup of water.

With the mixer on low, add the liquid to the powdered sugar mixture.

Once the powders have all been combined, mix the icing for about 4-5 minutes on medium speed until it holds a stiff peak...

... like this.

Always, always, always keep your royal icing covered with a damp cloth. This stuff dries out very quickly. So, if you don't have it covered, it will harden and you won't be able to use it. 

You always want to color your royal icing with gel-based icing colors. If you use an oil-based color (usually only used for candy, so you probably don't have any unless you bought it on purpose), it will ruin your icing.

This colored (or white) icing is what you will use for your outline. Grab some plastic wrap and put about 1/3 or 1/4 of the icing into an icing bag bullet to use for outlines.
(Besides the fact that the bullets make clean up so much easier, for royal icing, they are great because they help keep it from drying out while you're coloring and mixing the other icing.)

To get the rest of the icing to a "flooding" consistency, the consistency you want to make smooth, pretty cookies, you'll want to add water a little at a time- we're talking by the teaspoon or less- until any lines in the icing disappear in 8 seconds.

What that means is that you will thin the icing until it looks kind of runny. Get a dollop on the spatula or spoon. Drop a large drop into the cup of icing as seen above.

That drop should all but disappear like you see above in the slow count of 8-10. one...... two...... three........ ten.

I then pour this icing into a zip-top sandwich bag to flood my cookies.

To decorate with this icing, you want to outline your cookies with a tip #1, 2, or 3 (depending on how thick you like your outline to be). Allow that to dry for at least 20 minutes before you add the flooding icing.

The flooding icing usually takes several hours to overnight to dry completely. And some colors, like red and black occasionally don't dry completely. I'm still working the bugs out on those two. My last project, I got the red to dry... but still not the black, so I'm avoiding black to flood cookies with for now if I can.

You want to use this icing the same day you make it. If it sits for more than a few hours, you'll need to mix it up again. Sometimes just squeezing it in the bag will do, but if it's been more than 24 hours, you'll need to get it in a bowl and actually mix it with a spatula or mixer.

Royal icing is a pain to work with sometimes, just because it is a little fussy, but it's so worth it when you can stack all of your cookies, or send perfect cookies in the mail, and have the icing stay just right! Give it a try!

Would you like a printable version of this recipe for $1? Click here to purchase this recipe in an easy-to-view format. The link will take you to PayPal, where you will enter your email address, and after you pay, I will email you a .pdf verson of this recipe. Thank you!

Click the Links Below to See:
Other Icing Recipes & Tricks
Cookie Decorating Ideas & Recipes
My Complete Recipe Index

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Royal Icing Recipe

Royal icing is the awesome, hard-drying icing you see on all of the most awesome cookies out there. I have been working for months (literally) to get the recipe just right, so here it is.

What You Need:
Vinegar or lemon juice to wipe down equipment
1 lb. powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. meringue powder
1/3 cup water
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1-2 tsp. clear vanilla flavoring (or other flavoring of your choice)

(Click here for a Royal Icing Recipe using Egg Whites instead of Meringue Powder.)

Begin by wiping down all of the tools you will use with your icing (bowl, spatula, beaters, measuring cups/spoons, etc.) with a paper towel dampened with white vinegar or lemon juice. This will help remove all of the grease. Grease is the mortal enemy of royal icing. It will cause it to never dry completely... making you crazy in the process.

Measure powdered sugar. (preferably by weight. If you don't have a kitchen scale, approx. 3 1/2 -4 cups of powdered sugar will do.)

In the bowl of a mixer, combine the powdered sugar and the meringue powder.

Add the corn syrup and the flavoring to the 1/3 cup of water.

With the mixer on low, add the liquid to the powdered sugar mixture.

Once the powders have all been combined, mix the icing for about 4-5 minutes on medium speed until it holds a stiff peak...

... like this.

Always, always, always keep your royal icing covered with a damp cloth. This stuff dries out very quickly. So, if you don't have it covered, it will harden and you won't be able to use it. 

You always want to color your royal icing with gel-based icing colors. If you use an oil-based color (usually only used for candy, so you probably don't have any unless you bought it on purpose), it will ruin your icing.

This colored (or white) icing is what you will use for your outline. Grab some plastic wrap and put about 1/3 or 1/4 of the icing into an icing bag bullet to use for outlines.
(Besides the fact that the bullets make clean up so much easier, for royal icing, they are great because they help keep it from drying out while you're coloring and mixing the other icing.)

To get the rest of the icing to a "flooding" consistency, the consistency you want to make smooth, pretty cookies, you'll want to add water a little at a time- we're talking by the teaspoon or less- until any lines in the icing disappear in 8 seconds.

What that means is that you will thin the icing until it looks kind of runny. Get a dollop on the spatula or spoon. Drop a large drop into the cup of icing as seen above.

That drop should all but disappear like you see above in the slow count of 8-10. one...... two...... three........ ten.

I then pour this icing into a zip-top sandwich bag to flood my cookies.

To decorate with this icing, you want to outline your cookies with a tip #1, 2, or 3 (depending on how thick you like your outline to be). Allow that to dry for at least 20 minutes before you add the flooding icing.

The flooding icing usually takes several hours to overnight to dry completely. And some colors, like red and black occasionally don't dry completely. I'm still working the bugs out on those two. My last project, I got the red to dry... but still not the black, so I'm avoiding black to flood cookies with for now if I can.

You want to use this icing the same day you make it. If it sits for more than a few hours, you'll need to mix it up again. Sometimes just squeezing it in the bag will do, but if it's been more than 24 hours, you'll need to get it in a bowl and actually mix it with a spatula or mixer.

Royal icing is a pain to work with sometimes, just because it is a little fussy, but it's so worth it when you can stack all of your cookies, or send perfect cookies in the mail, and have the icing stay just right! Give it a try!

Would you like a printable version of this recipe for $1? Click here to purchase this recipe in an easy-to-view format. The link will take you to PayPal, where you will enter your email address, and after you pay, I will email you a .pdf verson of this recipe. Thank you!

Click the Links Below to See:
Other Icing Recipes & Tricks
Cookie Decorating Ideas & Recipes
My Complete Recipe Index

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Delivered by FeedBurner

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