Writing with Royal Icing
One aspect of cookie decorating that has taken lots of time and experience to master is writing with royal icing. It seems like it would be pretty straight forward, but there are lots of nuances in mastering proper icing consistencies, text placement, and various text styles.
Let me share my secrets with you.
Icing Consistencies
The first thing to master to achieve the perfect writing on cookies is the icing consistency. Depending on the style of writing, I may use two different icing consistencies: piping consistency and a thick flood consistency.
Piping Consistency.
I use piping consistency for pretty much all styles of writing, whether it’s a monoline cursive text, or a chunky block letter.
Piping consistency icing is icing that when lifted from the surface with a spoon forms a soft peak that curls back over but doesn’t flow back into the rest of the icing. This icing shouldn’t be so thick that it’s hard to stir nor so thin that it settles into a flat surface after several seconds.
Thick Flood Consistency
I use a thicker flood consistency icing when I am using a thicker letter, such as chunky calligraphy that has both a thin and thick part.
The reason I use a thicker flood consistency is that the sections that I am flooding are so small that if I were to use a standard 10-20 second consistency icing the icing may flow out of the section. Likewise, when it dries, it may create a divot or crater in that section. The thicker flood icing also helps to create big puffy letters.
This icing consistency is thinner than a piping consistency but only settles into a flat surface with a bit of jiggling (or a lot of time, 30 seconds plus).
I demonstrate both of these icing consistencies in the video above.
Text Placement
Placing the text on a cookie so that it’s evenly spaced or centered on the cookie is one of the things I struggle with the most. Which is why I invested in a projector.
Hands down, a projector was one of the best investments I made in my business. It has made cookie decorating so much easier for me and I highly recommend investing in one yourself if you are serious about growing your business or taking your hobby to the next level.
That being said, I know buying a projector isn’t feasible for everyone, so here are some tips I learned when I didn’t have a projector:
Practice writing out the word or phrase on a piece of paper with icing before writing on the cookie.
Print out the word or phrase in a style you like first, copy over it a number of times so that you get a feel for how to write it.
Etch or write with edible marker on the cookie before writing with icing.
Start with the center letter(s) and work out to make sure your word is centered.
For really complicated text designs, you can trace the design onto the cookie. See the tutorial here.
Text Styles
There are lots of different styles of writing and some people have beautiful writing without even trying! For those that do not have projectors, I highly recommend practicing various styles that you like, whether it’s calligraphy, brush lettering, bubble lettering, etc. with pen and paper first, before attempting it with royal icing.
For those that do have projectors and can essentially trace various styles, let me share some of my favorite fonts with you!
There are so many different fonts out there, and thankfully they are pretty easy to find. I prefer to download the font files to my computer or iPad (which is what I connect to my projector) so I can use them over and over again without having to go back to the website. DaFont and 1001FreeFonts are two of my go-to sites for free fonts. To use various fonts on my iPad, I use the app iFont.
I like to categorize font styles into four main groups.
And here are some of my favorite fonts in those different styles. Each font is listed by it’s name, so you can easily look it up on the font site.
Feel free to download and print this photo so that you can practice the various fonts and see which one you like best! Some of these fonts may seem either very skinny or very thick, but you can control the thickness of the text based on the size of your piping tip.
I hope this helps answer some or all of your questions about writing with royal icing on cookies. I know it can be tricky, but keep practicing and you will get the hang of it in no time!