Easy Royal Icing for Cake Decorating | Gemma's Bold Baking Basics

Hi and welcome to Bold Baking Basics. This is where we get stuck into the fundamentals of baking. These videos are about getting you to bake with confidence, anytime, anywhere. Right now I'm going to show you how to make royal icing and it's a really great recipe to have in your arsenal around the holidays because it is used to decorate cakes, cookies and even to glue together gingerbread houses. Previously I've shown you how to make royal icing to decorate cookies, right now I'm going to show you how to make royal icing to decorate cakes. As always the recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com. Okay, let's get started. So the main ingredient in this royal icing is egg whites. Now if you are worried about eating egg whites, just note, always buy good quality, use fresh. You can also heat treat them by putting them over a bain-marie and whisking them up until they're nice and warm. Also you can make royal icing using a meringue powder and I'm going to put that information on my website. So I'm making my royal icing on my stand mixer and you can use an electric hand mixer, that will work really well too, however it's really hard to make this recipe by hand because you need a lot of elbow grease. So into my bowl I'm going to add in my egg whites, then what we do is turn on the machine, just on to a medium-low speed and just let the egg whites whip up a little bit before we start adding in the sugar. So as your egg whites are getting foamy, I have a little secret here, I'm going to add in a little bit of fresh lemon juice and what this does, it kills any bacteria that's left in your eggs. So it's been around a minute or so, my eggs are nice and foamy so now I'm slowly going to add in my powdered sugar. Now just make sure that your powdered sugar is sifted because you don't want any lumps, you want it to be nice and airy. So just one scoop at a time, you gotta be patient here, just hang out and slowly add in your sugar. Let one scoop mix in, and then go again. And then just keep on adding sugar until you get the desired consistency that you want. So now come here to me, I want to show you something. I've added in around 3 quarters of my sugar, I want to show you what my royal icing looks like. Do you see that texture? And how drippy it is? This is perfect for decorating cookies, it's a nice consistency, it's not too runny, it's nice and thick, this is fantastic. However, we're not decorating cookies right now, we are going to decorate a Christmas cake, we need it a lot thicker. So back down you go, and we're gonna continue adding in more sugar. So at this point I'm gonna stop adding in my sugar, I do have a little bit left there but I'm not gonna add that in because I can see that I've got the consistency that I want. So I'm gonna turn off my machine, go in with my spatula, look at that, that is what I was going for, this is perfect to decorate a wedding cake, Christmas cake, whatever you like, it holds its shape, it's a beautiful color, it's gonna make amazing snow on top of our Christmas cakes. If you're not using your royal icing straight away, then put it into a container or a bowl, lay cling wrap directly on it, and keep it at room temperature for around 2 weeks. So this video is a 3 part series, I showed you how to make marzipan, I showed you how to make royal icing, and next I'm gonna show you how you can beautifully decorate a Christmas cake. For this royal icing recipe and for my royal icing to decorate cookies with, head over to my website. I'll see you back here really soon, for more Bigger Bolder Baking.