Royal Icing

This classic royal icing recipe comes together quickly with just three ingredients, is easy to work with, and sets up nicely. 

What Is Royal Icing? 

Royal icing is a hard white icing made with confectioners’ sugar, beaten (pasteurized) egg whites or meringue powder, and often some sort of flavoring. It’s used to decorate cookies, cakes, and other desserts that feature intricate designs.

How to Make Royal Icing

You'll find a detailed ingredient list and step-by-step instructions in the royal icing recipe below, but let's go over the basics:

Royal Icing Ingredients

These are the three ingredients you’ll need to make this homemade royal icing recipe: 

• Pasteurized egg whites: This recipe calls for pasteurized egg whites which means the eggs are partially sterilized and safe to eat.
• Confectioners’ sugar: Sifted confectioners’ sugar is often called “icing sugar” for a reason — its super fine texture means it’s unlikely to clump. 
• Lemon extract: Lemon extract is technically optional, but it adds a welcome hint of bright flavor. You can use vanilla extract, if you prefer. 

How to Make Royal Icing for Cookies

Here’s a brief overview of what you can expect when you make royal icing at home: Beat the pasteurized egg whites until foamy, then gradually beat in the other two ingredients until the mixture is thickened. 

How to Use Royal Icing

To get gorgeous, professional-looking iced cookies, you'll want to follow the "flooding icing" method. This means you add a border to your cookie with a thicker icing, and then flood the center of the cookie with a thinner, runnier icing. Here’s how: 

1. Prepare: Split your icing into two bowls. Designate one bowl for your border/detail icing (it will end up thicker) and one bowl for your flooding icing (it will end up thinner). To your border/detail icing bowl, add water in ½ teaspoon increments until it reaches the 12-second consistency. (You need less than you think you do. Mix and test after each ½ teaspoon is added). To your flooding icing bowl, add water in ½ teaspoon increments until it reaches the five-second consistency.If you go overboard with water (which can happen quickly), just add in a little extra sifted powdered sugar until your consistency is right. 
2. Outline: First things first, you'll want to thin out your two icings as explained in detail below. The royal icing recipe as written creates a thick icing so you can separate it into smaller bowls and thin each one according to your decorating needs. Your border/detail icing will have a very small amount of water added to it, so it stays pretty thick and your flooding icing will have a bit more water added to it to make it runnier.
3. Flood: While the border icing is still wet, you'll move on to flooding the cookies. This step is usually done with a pastry bag with a larger round tip, but you don't have to go through all those extra steps if you have an icing spreader. Simply take a small amount of the green flooding icing onto your icing spreader and add it to the center of the cookie, being careful to keep it all inside the border. Work quickly when flooding since the icing will start to harden and become unspreadable fast.
4. Decorate: If you’re decorating the iced cookies with different colors and designs, grab your pastry bag with your border/detail icing and pipe whatever design you like. 
5. Dry: Dry your cookies overnight on the counter. This allows the icing to dry beautifully, giving you a fresh surface to do your detailed icing work the next day. If you're rushed, two or three hours might be enough. You can gently check the dryness with the tip of your finger.
6. Add details: Use the thicker border icing to add detail work. Because the icing on the cookie has completely dried, the detail icing will sit on top of the dried icing, instead of blending with it as the first design did. 

How to Store Iced Cookies

Store your dried, iced cookies in an airtight container that has wax paper between each layer, or as a single layer in a zip top bag for up to one week. Cookies with royal icing can be frozen for up to three months, but they will need to be individually wrapped. 

Allrecipes Community Tips and Praise

“So easy and turned out fantastic,” raves achauhan. “I used vanilla extract instead of lemon. One batch was more than enough for all of our Christmas cookies!”

“This recipe worked well for decorating gingerbread cookies,” according to amiraanon. “Mixing a long time on high speed is the key to thickening the frosting.”

“This worked well for me,” says Joanne. “I pasteurized my own egg whites by whisking them with half the sugar over a double boiler until the mixture reached 160 degrees F (about 7-8 minutes). Then I removed it from the heat and beat in the rest of the sugar and flavoring until it reached the desired consistency.”

Editorial contributions by Corey Williams and Jessica Furniss