How to prevent bleeding on Royal Icing
Birthday Cookies: TIPS ON HOW TO PREVENT BLEEDING IN ROYAL ICING
Several of you have been asking me if my royal icing colors bleed into each other once my cookies dry or during the process of decorating them. I have to say that since 2015, which is when I made my first batch of cookies and have never stopped since, i’ve only had bleeding of my royal icing twice. And i’m going to tell you EXACTLY what I did differently than all the other times.
To preface I do have to give you a disclaimer/additional information. Here it is.
There may be a few different things that are causing your royal icing to bleed. And some of them may not be your fault!
-HUMIDITY! Humidity can play a big factor on how fast or how slow your cookies dry. Now that being said, how fast your royal icing dries will determine wether or not your icing will bleed. When two different colors of royal icing blend they will most likely bleed. For example, let’s say you outlined and flooded a pink part on your cookie, and it still looks kinda wet and you outline and flood a white part, the pink will most likely bleed onto the white.
-TIME. You have to be patient when decorating cookies. Here’s how I usually decorate my cookies. If I have 1-2 dozens or more I usually outline all my cookies with whatever colors i’m using for that order and then come back to flood my cookies. Ill usually flood all one color first and then come back and flood another color of all the cookies and so on. A basic rule I have is to outline, wait 1 minute, flood, wait 3 minutes for my royal icing to set, and flood another color. And it usually works for me.
-CONSISTENCY of your royal icing. Think about it. If your icing is too wet/runny then it will require a longer drying time and even when “dry” it may still remain wet and cause bleeding onto other colors.
TIPS:
-USE THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF MERINGUE POWDER: this may vary depending on where you live and the humidity levels. In my royal icing recipe I use 5 TBSP of meringue powder, there has been 1 instance where I only added 3.5 TBSP to the same recipe and my result was a “wet/dewy” icing and it seemed glittery (because it was taking too long to dry. When I reduced my meringue powder amount I also noticed my royal icing would crack when dry. because my top icing would dry but underneath the icing was still expanding and was still wet, causing the cracks.
-USE FANS OR DEHYDRATOR to help your cookies dry faster. Usually when I’m in a hurry I place my cookies in a dehydrator (once i’ve outlines and flooded one color) to help that layer or part dry faster and then continue with my next layers/parts.
I hope these tidbits help. Leave me your comments below and don’t forget to watch my latest cookie video on YouTube.