Hi everybody,
I've started cookie decorating a few months ago and while I've improved, I keep running into the same issue. I find it really difficult to explain, so bear with me as I try.
Essentially, my royal icing is very sticky when I work with it. It dries fine in my dehydrator, and flooding and outlining goes perfectly. Where it goes 'wrong', however, is when I try to do any sort of detail. Even a dotted pattern seems to be almost impossible. My issue is that the royal icing, as it's super sticky, doesn't just allow for me to do blobs or dots or lines or basically anything. It doesn't matter if the consistency is super stiff or flooding, it just is impossible for me to 'stop' the icing when I want it to. I can pull as hard as I want, put less pressure, but after whatever I'm trying to do, a sliver of royal icing always follows.
I follow a fairly standard recipe (4 cups of powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons merengue powder and water, amount depending on the consistency).
Now, when I look at other peoples' videos, they seem to have no problem making dots, lines or any sort of detail. When they want the icing to stop, it just does. It doesn't matter what I do though, that's not how it works for me.
I'm considering changing my royal icing recipe, perhaps egg whites would work better, but since that's going to be more expensive, I'm just really trying to figure out what I can do better. The other day I tried to make these sunflower cookies (How to make Cute BUMBLE BEE & SUNFLOWER COOKIES – Piped sunflower technique) and the petals just ended up being like half an inch longer (spilling all over the edge and even touching the plate), just because I can't get the icing to stop where I want it to.
Any and all advice is super welcome…
by bakingwithdemi