Baking Project

Picture from the book - Making great cakes by Angela Nilsen

No, in case you are wondering, I’m not running out of royal icing. It’s the name of those things like the butterfly and the love shapes in the picture above. Basically it’s made of dried royal icing and today I’m going to show you how I made mine. You will need royal icing (preferably freshly made), egg whites, icing sugar, round piping tubes and piping bags, an artist brush, a piece of acetate or baking sheet, and food colouring. For this project, we need two types of royal icing - a stiff consistency to make the outline and a softer one for filling in. To make the royal icing stiffer, add more icing sugar and stir. For softer consistency, add a few drops of the egg white and mix. The soft consistency is similar to that of a whipping cream.

Begin by tracing some shapes you like on a piece of paper. Then lay your baking or acetate sheet securely on top of the paper. You don’t want the sheet to be moving around, tape it if you have to.

Make an outline using the stiff consistency royal icing. I’m using my no. 2 round shape tip but the smaller the tip, the better.

Leave that to dry. In the mean time, prepare the icing to fill in (or, they call it flooding). Colour the icing. I just use the usual liquid food colouring for this. Remember to colour the icing first, then only thinned it down with the egg whites. Once you get the right consistency, pipe it using a plastic or paper bag to fill the outlines. Be careful not to make the hole of you paper bag too big or the icing will flow out too quick. Try not to touch the outlines made from the stiff icing. Fill in so it looks slightly over filled and rounded, it will shrink a bit once its dried.

Use a brush to fill in any gaps. Leave it to dry overnight or longer. Once dried you can remove it by using a palette knife or anything with a flat surface.

To make the butterfly in the cake picture above, you do two separate run-outs for the wings. The body can be made of fondant. Stick the wings together with some royal icing and you will have a beautiful 3D butterfly.

Frankly, I think the technique is simple, but to wait for it to dry can take up to two days. I normally can’t wait for that long. I keep checking if I can lift the whole thing up and always break some along the way. I guess it’s easier to make butterflies out of fondant or gum paste. Click here to see the Wilton way to do it.

Here’s a question. The flooding technique is also used for decorated cookies. Once decorated, the cookies need to be baked a few minutes again in the oven. So, if I were to bake the run-outs, will it turn hard and I don’t have to wait for it to dry naturally ? Or the whole thing will just melt ? Maybe this will be my next baking project @ experiment.

picture from www.bakedecoratecelebrate.com

I can’t do any baking today as I am busy running some errands and also attending to some contractors doing work at my house. So, just a short note on ‘drop flower’. Basically, drop flowers are made with butter cream or royal icing, using piping/decorating tips.

The above chart from Wilton is very useful as it shows the reference number of the tip and how the outcome of the flowers look like. As you can see, there are many types of tips, you can buy this in any bakery supply shops. Normally they put the tips in small plastic drawers. One usually cost less than RM5.00 depending on the size.

You can colour the icing using the usual liquid food colouring. The icing should be of medium consistency. If using royal icing, drop flowers can be made in advance to be used later on cakes or cupcakes.

To learn to make drop flowers, please refer to the following links :

Baking911

Sugarcraft

Bakedecoratecelebrate

Howstuffworks

Happy decorating !

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.

Royal icing is usually used to make wedding cakes and requires a more tedious job compared to using fondant. It sets hard. The cake normally use is fruit cake as this type of cake is compact and will provide a strong base. Three or more layers is spread over a cake, each layer will take about 8 hours to dry. This will ensure a smooth finished. 1.25 kg of royal icing is needed to cover a 9 inch cake. When using, you need to cover the icing with a damp cloth to prevent it from drying out. A few drops of water or egg white can be used to soften it .

Image source - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebelthite/438526894/

The above picture shows a very expert work of piping with royal icing. It involves some lace and extension work. For lace work, you pipe the lace motif onto a baking paper, and when it’s dry, transfer and attach the lace work to the cake.

Image source- http://irma303.multiply.com/

Extension work means making lots of parallel lines from the sides of the cake and forming it into a bridge (like the big picture above).

I myself am still learning on the techniques. I prefer decorating with butter cream or fondant, as it is simpler for a beginner like me.

To answer your question Sri, royal icing can be used to pipe little details like dots or some small lace work on your cupcake. To cover the whole cupcake and make it more ‘kids friendly’, it is better to use butter cream (see the recipe I have given earlier). Or you could use chocolate frosting, glace icing or chocolate ganache (that is another topic).