How to do Royal Icing Flood Work or Runouts
I’m fairly new to making cakes, so wanted to combine my inexperience with them with something I know a bit more about; flooding with royal icing.
I ended up with this simple fondant-covered Christmas cake design:
You don’t want to see the edges of this cake at the back; who knew that covering a square cake could be so tricky!?
The nice thing about flood work is that it can cover up many imperfections. 
If you don’t already know and are wondering what it is…
Flood work, also known as runouts, transfers, color flow (by Wilton), or run sugar, is basically the piping of a runny royal icing onto parchment paper or acetate paper into an outlined shape.
When the shape dries, you have an icing design which you can use for a multitude of decorating purposes; on cakes, cookies, gingerbread houses, cupcakes etc. You can also pipe onto wires, toothpicks, skewers etc. so that your design can be ‘free-standing’.
If you’d like to try it, here is a simple step-by-step as to how to do your own floodwork:
How to do royal icing floodwork:
1. Make your royal icing, tint and thin it to the proper consistency. I use Peggy Porschen’s
2. Place the pattern you’re tracing underneath parchment paper or a transparency. (Transparencies are also known as acetate paper). I prefer using transparencies over parchment paper.
If you do end up trying the transparency, make sure you lightly smear it with shortening so your icing doesn’t stick.
Before I go on to the next step I should mention that I often use my KopyKake drawing projector to project my image. With the projector you can play around with the size of the image, although if you don’t have one, you could photocopy your image and make it smaller or larger as you wish and then trace it.
3. Get your piping bags
*Sorry this photo is so dark… only the projector light is on here.
4. Outline your image with your flood-work royal icing and fill it right in. If your icing is the right consistency (not too runny and not too stiff), you have that option. Again, I use the 10 second rule to help me figure out the consistency, as mentioned in #1.
Some people like to outline with a thicker/stiffer icing, let that dry, and then fill in later with the runnier, flood work icing.
5. Make multiples of your decoration as flood work breaks easily.
6. Let your first layer dry for 24 hours before you add more details. (Also see number 7 for drying time information).
7. After your final details have been piped, again let your decorations dry for 24 hours. How long it takes to dry does depend on the size of the decoration and the amount of humidity in the air, however, I find 24 hours seems to be a safe time.
Some people like to dry their royal icing floodwork under heat lamps, or in a low-temperature oven, however I do find that the colors tend to bleed just a little, especially when a deep color such as red is beside white.
These ‘peppermint candy’ shapes above were dried in an oven and you can see a tiny amount of bleeding. It’s a great technique if you’re pressed for time and probably better for colors which are not in such sharp contrast to each other as red and white.
8. Peel your dry royal icing runout gently away from its’ backing by using a metal spatula or palette knife or peel the parchment or transparency away from the design by putting it near the edge of the table and gently pulling the ‘paper’ away.
9. Put a small dab of royal icing on the back of your flood work decoration and delicately place onto your desired surface.
That’s it!
Since these sticker-inspired gingerbread people were originally intended for a gingerbread house I made, but I had extra which I didn’t use, they aren’t the right size. They’d probably look nicer if their height matched the dimensions of the cake.
I’d like to give credit to Martha Stewart’s current December magazine and Cookie Craft Christmas for the ’swirly peppermint candy’ idea. Incidentally, I’m happy to share that I’ll soon be hosting a giveaway for the new book Cookie Craft Christmas
If you have any more tips or ideas about flood work, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
I’d also love to hear from you if you know the correct spelling of the term, ‘floodwork’. Is it two words or one?
Happy piping!
xo,
Marian
Hi!
First, your gingerbread people are adorable! Second, I have not been doing this long myself, but there are two things that come to mind that I found out from my research. 1. When using a 0 or 00 tip with royal icing, it can often clog even if you sift the powdered sugar. The way around this is, after mixing it, powder it through a knee hi stocking to remove any tiny pieces of the sugar. 2. To help prevent bleeding of red or black: Mix your colors the night before as they will darken over night. For the red, use dark pin( and allow to sit over night, then if needed you can add some red, but sometimes the dark pink is red enough and less likely to bleed than the red. With black, you can add some coco powder first (giving it a wonderful flavor) and allowing you to use less black.
Sorry this is so long, but this is information I wanted to share as it has been very helpful to me, and I hope it is to you too.
Great tutorial! Oh, how I’d love a KopyKake!!! Everything you do is AMAZING!!!
oh my Mar, i so want to be able to bake pretty things like this!
Marion, these gingerbread people are adorable. I have never done this flooding technique and cant wait to try it out! Thanks for the tutorial. do you find that they break easy? Tammy
I adore your gingerbread men. When I make royal icing for cookies my icing ALWAYS seems to come out way too thick. What am I doing wrong? I have tried several different recipes. I found Peggy Porshens and I believe it was in metrics. I would appreciate any help I can get. Oh and by the way I belive the correct spelling is flood work as 2 words.
Thanks Lovey for the great tips!
I actually learned about the nylon one on cakecentral a few months ago, and then saw it again in a Bonnie Gordon class. It works really well. Thanks again for all the info. you shared!
Bridget and Gis, thanks for your sweet comments!
Tammy, they do break easily. Definitely why I recommend making multiples of each royal icing decoration. As long as you have some back-ups and handle them gently, it should work out. Have fun decorating!
Celina, thanks for the correct spelling.
If I understand your concern correctly, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong with the recipes… most of the recipes I’ve tried do come out thick.
It’s at that point that you add water bit by bit to thin them out.
Have you tried the 10 second rule? If you haven’t, I’ve explained it in a tutorial. (Look under tutorials in the left sidebar here, and then click under Cookie Decorating Tutorial. It’s a long tutorial but it includes the 10 second rule in there).
Hope that helps!
Those are SO cute! You have such talent! I’d love one of those projectors. I could think of so many reasons to use one!
Great tutorial Marian!!…as usual! Love your gingerbread men!!!
Donatella
sometimes it’s called colour flow too.. great idea to decorate the cake with these floodworks.. thanks for sharing!
Well it maybe be not too long that you are working with cakes but the result looks beautiful!
Thanks to your tutorials I have also tried decorating cookies and with some good results… So I will maybe try also the gigerbread! Thanks again for all your useful and beautiful suggestions!
Ilenia from simplynabiki.com
I attempted to do some flooding cookies for my sons birthday recently and couldn’t get beyond piping the “frame”. I used #1 tip and for some reason the icing was hardening in the tip making it hard to have the line be the same width.
When I tried thining the icing it would leak of the side of the cookie. Not sure what I’m doing wrong, I know I have a really hard time getting the cookies to have a flat surface with a sharp edge like yours do.
Hi, Gingerbread people are adorable…. if your tip(s) #1 is getting clogged, try sticking a straight pin in it; this will help keep it flowing between cookies.
interesting tutorials and beautiful art work….
you are soooo talented.
ML
Thanks for all the kind comments and ideas!
Ivona, it sounds like your icing was too thick at first, and then too thin. Have you tried the 10 second rule? (It’s explained tutorials and then under Cookie Decorating Tutorial). The icing should almost be like the consistency of yoghurt.
Wow that is gorgeous. I simply love it. Too cute! Great tutorial also.
First, the cake is so super cute! Second, covering square cakes with fondant stumped me until I watched a couple videos. These are two of the ones I like best:
http://www.vimeo.com/298002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyRy2QX2wKo
Love your gingerbread people!
Great tutorial! I love this idea of using the royal icing instead of fondant! Also, the very first cake I ever tried covering with fondant was square…what was I thinking??
I used your 10 second rule to decorate some gingerbread cookies and it works perfectly! Thank you, thank you for teaching us all your wonderful tricks!
oh i soooo can’t wait to try this technique.
thanks for sharing this…i’ve got an upcoming baby shower i could use this for…
you are sooo awesome!
I love those gingerbread men!!!! They are so cute!!
Marian,
Thanks for this tip.. it will be useful in drawing cartoons and stick them onto the cookies rather than drawing straight onto cookies and risk spoiling the whole thing (which I normally do)
One question: thought grease is No.1 enemy to royal icing? so what about the crisco on transparency, wouldn’t it break down the icing?
Angela,
I beg to differ; your cookies are gorgeous!
A very light coating of crisco helps prevent the flood work from sticking to the transparency so that it comes off easily without breaking when it’s dry. (Flood work is very fragile).
The small amount used on the tranparency (just enough to make it slightly greased) doesn’t seem to harm the royal icing at all.
Happy flooding!
Marian
[...] The students made the cupcakes and icing in class, and I contributed some leftover flower and flood work icing bird toppers I had from a cake decorating class (more on that later), and my Christmas gingerbread [...]
What a wonderful tutorial. I shall make sure i try this out soon. I was just wondering how long you would be able to store these if you had some leftover?
Thanks Alice.
As long as the icing isn’t made from raw egg whites, and as long as they’re sealed well & carefully packaged, you can store them indefinitely from what I’ve heard and found.
Question: I’m showing my utter ignorance here, but I know that any grease or oil at all will ruin my royal icing. What happens if you put the shortening on the transparency, and then pipe the icing on it? I’ve seen books suggest that you grease before putting down royal icing, too. Can you help me understand this aspect of things? Thanks!
I am doing some intricate designs for a cake, and I thought of using royal icing to make (large) runouts, and then placing them on the cake. Will runouts work if placed directly on buttercream? Will they melt, or bleed into the white frosting? I appreciate your help! Your tutorials are great!
I just gotta say that I seriously love this blog’s illustrations. Totally reminds me of the Candy Land board game…or the Santa’s Village theme park in California. Love it.
Colleen; not ignorance at all! I can’t explain it perfectly but from what I noticed, MIXING any type of grease (fat, shortening etc.) into royal icing wreaks havoc with it, however a small amount smeared onto the transparency doesn’t do anything to the icing itself except help it not stick to the transparency surface. I can’t give you more detail than that at this point, but will email you if I find out!
Jami; they should sit on the buttercream just fine as long as it’s not too humid. Humidity will make anything melt or bleed!
Thanks DebT!
Hi Marian
Like Jami I’m making floodwork ‘art’ to be placed on top of a cake. I read that buttercream was not recommended as a base so I was going to use fondant but I see you say it is fine so will try it, it would make it more tasty I think.. My question is about the aesthetic of the finished cake though. In your opinion do you think cutting into a cake (with the hardenend Royal Icing) on top and having it break-up into many little pieces as it does, will be awful? also having the soft cake and really hard bits of icing in one mouthful might be a bit odd? I know its fine with cookies but with soft cake?
Just thinking ahead, its my first time attemping it this way.. any thoughts would be so appreciated
Thank You ♥
Hi Jami,
I know that many cakes in Great Britian were traditionally covered with royal icing, so it must have been a normal thing, at least at some point in time.
In North America at least, I don’t think we’re accustomed to have royal icing either totally covering the cake or eating bits of it sitting on top of the cake either.
I would recommend maybe mentioning to guests that the sugar decorations are royal icing and can be taken off and enjoyed later if they chose.
When I give my cupcakes with gumpaste flowers out I usually do something similar. I’ll let people know that the gum paste is edible, but is mainly decorative as most people don’t love the taste.
Most men don’t care; they eat everything. The women usually end up want to keep the sugar decoration anyways.
Hope that helps!
Great post! Very helpful as I am just starting out with flood work and royal icing. Thank you ;0)