Baking Project

Glace icing is the simplest form of icing. Very handy if you don’t have enough time to decorate your cake or cupcakes. I made some cupcakes yesterday and decorated it with glace icing. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups icing sugar, sifted

2 to 3 tablespoon of warm water or fruit juice

food colouring

Method : Sift the icing sugar. Use a wooden spoon, add the warm water and stir until the icing is smooth. The consistency should be similar to that of a whip cream. Or it should coat the back of your spoon. Add the colouring and it’s ready to use. This recipe is enough to cover an 8 inch round cake or for 24 cupcakes.

However take note that glace icing will harden quickly, so you have to work fast. I also find that my cupcake doesn’t look very nice the day after. Some of the icing started to crack. So it’s best eaten on the same day. There’s a few variety, you can add coffee powder, cocoa or fruit juice to flavour the glace icing, in place of the water.

All beginners should try this icing. A no-fail recipe !

Apart from covering cakes, royal icing is also used to pipe additional features and to glue together parts of the gum paste flowers. If you can’t get hold of any meringue powder, here’s a recipe on how to make royal icing using egg whites.

Ingredients :

1 egg white (reserve 1 more egg white to adjust the consistency)

500 gm icing sugar (sieved twice)

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Method:

Whisk the egg white slightly. Add the icing sugar a tablespoon at a time to the egg white. Mix well. Add the cream of tartar. Beat for about 20 minutes until you get the right consistency.

Soft peak is use for writing and embroidery . Medium peak is for piping any shell borders. To pipe additional features for the flowers and glue the parts together, we will need a medium to stiff peak. You can adjust the consistency by adding icing sugar to make it harder, or adding egg white to soften it. Any leftover icing can be kept in the fridge in a tight container, and to re-use just beat it up again. Always cover royal icing while working, as it can turn hard very fast.