How To Decorate With Royal Icing

Okay, everyone. We’re going back to basics today! It’s easy to read a post about cookie decorating, but you can’t get anywhere without a solid foundation. Today, it’s a 101 class on the most fundamental building block of royal icing- how to pipe, flood, and embellish a sugar cookie! 

You might have watched a couple of those viral sugar cookie decorating videos that play at 10x speed, and watched a talented person knock out an amazing design in 30 seconds. Then you keep scrolling past, thinking Sure, that’s nice… but I could never do THAT. You may just change your tune when you see just how easy it is to get started, and how much you improve every time you practice. A basic cookie flood is just three simple steps!

The first thing you’ll need is a good recipe for royal icing. I’ve written up a solid one for you that you can find HERE, along with a post on how to thin your icing for flooding HERE. Once you’ve prepared your icing, you’re ready to start! There are a few tools that I find helpful to have at hand when I decorate:

• A scribe (etching) tool
• A countertop fan to speed drying
• Scotch tape to cover the tips of any piping bags not in use

Let’s begin! The first thing you’ll want to do is pipe the outline of the shape you want on your cookie. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll be using simple shapes in most of this tutorial. Using a #2 or #3 tip on your piping bag, draw your shape. Use firm pressure while squeezing the bag, and hold the tip about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch above your cookie surface, so that the icing ‘falls’ onto the cookie. This will help prevent squiggly or shaky lines. I am right-handed and like to hold/squeeze the bag with my right hand, and guide the shape with my left. You will find what works best for you as you go along.

Next, you will need your flooding bottle. Begin flooding your cookie by using gentle pressure on your squeeze bottle, following close to the inside edge of your piped outline. Don’t squeeze directly onto the line, you want the outline to act as a dam to hold the thinner icing in place. Continue to circle around the edges of your cookie, moving closer to the center each time. You can leave small lines between each circle for the icing to melt together as it settles. Once you’ve gotten to the center, stop squeezing and grab your scribe tool. Using the needle tip, gently push the icing together where there are gaps. Once you’re satisfied, give the cookie a quick shake or two back and forth on the counter to help the icing flatten out, and then leave it to set.

I try to work on three cookies at a time, meaning I outline three, then go back and flood them in the same order. You can do more or less depending on the shape and your skill level, but be aware of your time and work quickly- you don’t want your piped outline to dry before you get back to that cookie to flood or you may end up with a defined piping line that doesn’t blend in with the rest of the shape. Keeping everything nice and wet ensures a seamless, smooth shape.

It’s the same process, over and over, for any shape. Once you have the rhythm of it down, you may be surprised by how quickly you can work through several dozen cookies. My royal icing recipe general sets up enough to eat without making a mess in about 2 hours, and is solid enough to decorate on top of in about 4 hours, although more drying time is always a good thing in my book. You can follow this pattern with any shape, although you will want to use a smaller tip size for a design with sharp points or lots of detail.

Once you’ve allowed this base layer of icing to dry, you can repeat the process on top in another color or pipe embellishments. I always run a fan on medium-low once I incorporate another color into my design, because I’ve found it greatly reduces the chance of your colors bleeding into each other as they dry.

That’s all there is to it! You can find lots of specific designs here on my blog by searching the ‘Bake It’ category. Let me know in the comments if you’re having any trouble!