Royal Icing Course

At the beginning of the year I went to another cake decorating course. However, the teacher had changed since the last course and her style of decorating is quite old school but I still found it interesting to learn another form of cake decoration which is Royal Icing.

I didn't know much about royal icing as I'd never used it before so finding out you can pipe with it, make flowers with it and cover an entire cake with it was all new to me.

At first I couldn't get to grips with piping a rose until I realised it was because the icing was too runny, even though it looked thick enough it would still smoosh together. After adding some more icing powder to the pot it finally came together and looked like a rose. I found the leaves very easy to do but then again leaves are easy to do in fondant and sugar paste so that was no surprise.

The next part of the class was to cover a cake with royal icing. It gives a good finish to a cake but is a bit of a faff on as you have to cover the cake at least 2 to 3 times to get a good smooth finish where as with fondant you roll out a big enough piece to cover the cake, smooth it in to place and it's ready to work on.

After covering the cake three times I was then ready to learn the piping techniques. On the cake below I used extension work and lace work around the sides and placed the piped roses on top. I really enjoyed the piping work around the sides of the cake, it was relaxing and enjoyable especially once you've finished all the piping and your hands are killing but you look at the finished cake and it's a wow moment. I know its nowhere near as perfect as the ones in the books but I was pleased with it.

The entire cake took most of the course to make so the last two weeks we played around with royal icing. I practiced piping letters and numbers with it and also traced around a teddy bear picture to create a motif of sorts that once dried can be lifted on to a cake. For some strange reason the icing used for the bear went a bit funky, looks a bit bubbly.