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!

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 ♥

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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?

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