Make Royal Icing to decorate gingerbread man cookies or to hold your Gingerbread House together. Start with making royal icing from one of our three Royal Icing recipes.

Make perfect and delicious royal icing - with or without egg whites or meringue powder. Consider your use, choose accordingly.

 

• Royal Icing (with pasteurized egg whites)
• Royal Icing (without egg whites)
• Royal Icing (with meringue powder)

Royal Icing Recipe

Note: this icing is to be used to decorate your gingerbread man cookies or your gingerbread house. Use the royal icing with meringue powder to build and hold your gingerbread house together.

Using mixer, whip until frothy ½ cup pasteurized egg whites and 2 teaspoons lemon juice. On low speed, gradually add 4–4½ cups powdered sugar until mixture is thick and smooth. Turn speed to high and whip ~3–5 minutes until mixture forms stiff, glossy peaks.

For white icing, remove ~¾ of icing from mixing bowl and place in container. If using immediately, cover container with damp tea towel to prevent icing from drying out. For use later, place plastic wrap directly on icing, then seal with lid. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Add green food coloring by drops to remaining ~¼ of icing until desired color is reached and whip. Add powdered sugar to adjust consistency if needed. Store per instructions above.

Helpful Hints:  Icing should hold its shape on cookie and maintain pattern of decorating tube but not be so thick that it can't be squeezed easily out of pastry bag. Add powdered sugar or lemon juice to adjust consistency. Lemon juice complements gingerbread and provides acidity to stabilize egg whites in icing. If you don’t like lemon flavor, add ½ teaspoon Cream of Tartar instead. Cream of Tartar is found with spices in the grocery store.

Decorator’s Icing Recipe (without egg whites) Courtesy of The Preppy Chef

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon meringue powder
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 

Instructions:

1. In mixer bowl, add powdered sugar and the meringue powder, mix until thoroughly combined. Sifting is not required.
2. At the lowest setting of your mixer, using the paddle attachment, add in the combined water, corn syrup and flavorings. Depending on your preference you can use all vanilla or decrease to 1 teaspoon and add in an additional teaspoon of another flavoring such as almond or lemon emulsion.
3. Once the ingredients are fully combined, turn the mixer to medium, beating until the icing is well blended and smooth like thick honey. (2-3 minutes).

Note: This recipe makes almost triple the amount of icing you'll need to decorate the gingerbread man cookies from the Ginger's Breadboys Cookie Kit. Consider cutting the recipe in half. Leftover icing can also be refrigerated and used for other holiday cookies.

Royal Icing with Meringue Powder

Royal Icing with meringue powder is the perfect icing for gingerbread houses because of its stiff consistency when it dries. This recipe is enough to build (and hold together) two large gingerbread houses made for Ginger's Breadboys Gingerbread House Kit. 
Note: you may want to use a different royal icing recipe without meringue powder for decorating your gingerbread house to allow for intricate designs.

Prep Time: 25 min

Kitchenware:

Stand or Hand-Held Mixer

Whisk Attachment or Beaters

Bowl or Airtight Container with Lid

Plastic Wrap

Ingredients:

1lb or 3 1/2 ~ 4 cups powdered sugar

3 tbsp. of Meringue Powder (Included in the Gingerbread House Kit)

7 tbsp. of water

Step-by-step:

1) Add dry ingredients (powdered sugar and meringue powder) to the mixing bowl.

2) With the mixer set on low speed, and using the whisk attachment or beaters, gradually add water, until the mixture is thick and smooth.

3) Turn speed to high and mix until mixture forms stiff, glossy peaks. (About 3-5 minutes).

4) Store icing by placing it on a bowl and adding plastic wrap directly to the icing before closing the lid. Refrigerate until ready for use.

5) If you want, you can also add a few drops of food coloring. You can use either liquid food coloring or gel food coloring.