3 egg whites, at room temperature (Important)
4 cups Confectioners Sugar (Powered Sugar = Icing sugar) Sifted
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
Food colouring – optional - use with discretion
With a hand held mixer at the ready – place the egg whites, powdered sugar, and cream of tartar in the clean glass bowl. Beat all together on low speed until combined then scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Then beat the mixture on medium/high speed until very thick, shiny, stiff and white – about 8 minutes.
At this point check the texture making sure that it is suitable for your needs.
For a stiffer icing, add a little more powdered sugar at this point and beat again until well combined.
Now: If you want to colour your mixture – add a few drops of food colouring at this point and mix on LOW until the colouring has been mixed through evenly.
If several different colours are needed divide the mixture into Clean Glass Bowls, add colouring and mix by hand.
NOTE: Only add 1 drop of food colouring at a time – you can always add more but cannot take out – these colourings are strong.
FURTHER NOTE: Royal Icing will begin setting as soon as it is made and unfortunately it dries to a very hard consistency! (Yikes)
To prevent the icing from getting hard before you use it, thoroughly wet a Clean andSterilised Tea Towel (I keep several just this purpose) and place it over the top of the icing in the bowl. It is very important to keep the icing covered!
Likewise, if you are using a pastry bag and piping tips with the icing, twist the back end of the bag tightly, clip it with a clean and sterile peg (again I have several of these just for this purpose) and wrap a wet tea towel around the tip and the bag when not in use so the icing will not dry in the tip or the bag.
Once applied Royal Icing should harden within 30 -60 minutes – but this does rather depend on the temperature of the room and outside, humidity, and amount of icing/s used.
Note: NEVER refrigerate products with hardened Royal Icing –
Why? Because the Icing will become a soft sticky mess!