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.