Royal Icing Recipe for Decorating Cookies

Royal icing makes your cookies so much more cheerful and appealing. The best part? You only need a few simple ingredients to make it!

Why I Love Making Royal Icing

Baking cookies is always fun right? But making them look extra pretty with this easy royal icing recipe is even more fun.

You can keep it simple or go for really intricate designs. The choice is yours. This recipe is easy to make and can even be used to build and decorate gingerbread houses.

Recipe Ingredients

• confectioners’ sugar – also known as icing sugar or powdered sugar
• water – you can also use something like lemon juice to give your icing a flavor other than sugar
• egg white powder – you can replace the egg white powder with meringue powder but the ratio might be slightly different. Check below for more details on that.

How To Make Royal Icing

Making royal icing is quite easy. You just add all the ingredients to the bowl of a food processor or mixer and on low speed mix it together.

With this recipe you will get a thick consistency that will hold up well for making outlines on your cookies.

If you want something a bit thinner to fill in the lines, you simply add more water to the mixture. Do this a little bit at a time to get the right consistency.

Difference Egg White Powder vs Meringue Powder

They’re very similar, but not quite the same:

• Egg white powder is simply dehydrated egg whites. When rehydrated with water, it behaves like fresh egg whites. I always use egg white powder for my royal icing.
• Meringue powder usually contains dried egg whites plus other ingredients such as sugar, cornstarch, stabilizers, and sometimes flavorings or acids. It’s designed specifically for making meringues and icings more stable and shelf-stable.

In most royal icing recipes, you can substitute meringue powder for egg white powder. Just keep in mind that the ratio may differ slightly depending on the brand.

For example, Wilton recommends about 4 teaspoons of meringue powder + 4 teaspoons of water to equal 1 egg white.

Because meringue powder has added sugar/starch, the texture may be a little different compared to pure egg white powder.

Which Piping Tips

If you’re going to decorate cookies with royal icing, you’ll need piping tips. In the photo above I used Wilton tips #1 and #3. Since I often get questions about which tips I use, here’s a quick overview of my favorites:

• Wilton #2: for outlining and filling cookies
• Wilton #1: for fine lines or writing (not suitable for thick icing)
• Wilton #3: for filling in larger areas more quickly
• Wilton #129: for drop flowers (only with thick icing)
• PME ST51: for piping leaves
• Wilton #102: for ruffled edges

Of course, there are many more tips you can try, but these are the ones I reach for most often when decorating cookies. If you’re looking for an easy recipe for cookies that are perfect for decorating, try my sugar cookies or these chocolate sugar cookies.

Royal Icing Without Egg White Powder

A common question I get: Can I make royal icing without egg white powder? Usually, this comes up because egg white powder isn’t always available in supermarkets or grocery stores. You can, however, easily buy it online or at specialty cooking shops.

Technically, you can replace it with fresh egg whites – but I don’t recommend using raw egg whites because of the risk of salmonella. These days, pasteurized egg whites are widely available in grocery stores, and that’s a great option.

For reference: the amount of egg white powder in the recipe below is equal to about 2 egg whites. If you’re using actual egg whites, you’ll need little to no extra water (since 10 g/0.35 oz egg white powder + 60 ml/4 tbsp liquid = about 2 egg whites).