Creating A Beautiful Cookie Garden: Royal Icing Roses 101!

Hey Besties! I’ve heard your requests and am here to deliver! I’m thrilled to be sharing our first tutorial in our new series covering royal icing florals! We’re starting with the foundations of royal icing roses and will continue to build our cookie garden with many more flowers! Recognizing that florals can be really intimidating, many cookiers shy away from them. But Bestie, we’re going to do this together, and I think you’ll find the florals are actually very forgiving! We’ll talk about the recipes we use, consistency, tips and of course, put it all together with a demo video! Let’s grow!

Royal Icing Recipe

If you already have a royal icing recipe you love and that works perfect for you, I love that for you! You will need a STIFF consistency for making florals. We use the same royal icing recipe for all of our decorating and just adjust the consistency for whatever technique we’re using. We LOVE the recipe we use and never have color bleed or other issues that commonly plague cookiers. The secret to amazing royal icing is HOW you make it. You can put the same ingredients together in a different way and end up with a very different result. We hear time and time again, the magic is in the METHOD of making the icing. THIS post walks you through exactly how to make your royal icing. I hope you love it as much as many others do.

Royal Icing Florals Consistency

The million-dollar question with every cookie decorating technique! “What consistency do you use?” Often times this can be a delicate balance, but for florals, you will need a STIFF consistency. Bestie, you don’t want your icing to move. At all. To capture the delicate petals, intricacies of the flowers, you want your icing to stay exactly where you put it.

When we make our royal icing in the mixer, it is a medium-ish peak consistency after 5 minutes and that’s perfect for almost all of our decorating since we’ll be thinning it for the consistencies we need. You’ll find that this icing is very silky and fluffy. However, for florals, we need it STIFF. So we make our icing as usual, maybe adding 1 extra minute for stiffer peaks. Then you want to separate into separate smaller bowls, make your colors and add powdered sugar, mixing by hand, to the STIFF consistency you need. Once the peaks are standing up on their own with very little to no movement, you’re ready for florals!

I encourage you to work with smaller amounts of icing at a time in your bags for florals. A decorating bag that fits in your hand will give you a lot more control versus a really full bag of icing. And if you start working on your florals and your icing is running together at all or you’re not getting the definition you want, stop and go add more powdered sugar to make it stiffer. It’s never worth fighting your icing when you know it’s not the consistency you need.

What Do I need?

Good news! You likely already have what you need to get started making royal icing flowers! And for royal icing roses 101, you’ll just need a couple decorating tips. We’ll work with an open star tip and a petal tip. You can go as small or as large as you want with these depending on the size of flowers you want. Common open star tips are 14, 16, 18. Common petal tips range from 101-104. We’ve had this decorating tip set for so many years and they are still as good as new. We’ve added to our collection with additional special tips as well.

There are cheaper decorating tip sets you can buy, but if you plan to use them for years, I encourage you to buy a quality set. Otherwise, you’ll end up spending more in the long-run replacing rusted, broken tips. Also know that the tip numbers I’m referencing are Wilton and pretty standard in the US. Tips made elsewhere may not have the same numbers, so make sure to look at the shape of your tip and not just the number.

You’ll also need at least a couple flower nails. We use the ones that came with the tip set I referenced above. You can buy these HERE or usually at your local Michaels, Joann or Hobby Lobby too.

Lastly, you’re going to need about a million squares of parchment paper. 😆 Okay, not a million, but cut up a whole lot of parchment squares to have nearby.

Tips For Royal Icing Roses

Alright Besties, we’re getting close to starting our garden here. And there are just a few tips I want to share that made a huge difference for me when I started working with florals. And keep in mind that I do not claim to be a master cookier florist at all!

• When working with a flower nail, finger placement is KEY! Before starting each flower, take a moment to look and review how you’re holding your nail. You’ll see this in the demo video as well. A lot of making royal icing florals comes down to handling your flower nail well.
• The tiniest angle change of your tip can create a very different look! If you want a more closed rose versus an open rose, pay attention to the angle of your tip.
• Have a moist paintbrush (reserved for decorating) nearby when making florals. This works perfectly to clean up any tails or petals, much better than a scribe will.
• When first starting with florals, sit down with a bag of icing, a whole bunch of parchment squares and just practice. You’ll be amazed at the progress you can make in 1 hour, or even 30 minutes, of just practicing.
• Remember, that even in nature, not every flower is perfect and symmetrical! In fact, your flowers will look more life-like if they aren’t perfect!

Rosette Practice Sheet

I made this rosette practice sheet for you, and you’ll see exactly how to use this in the demo video. It guides you through the exact motion to create beautiful royal icing rosettes. And once you pipe them, you can leave them on the sheet protector to fully dry. In less than 24 hours, these will pop right off and be ready to be applied to your cookies with a small dab of royal icing as glue. THESE are the sheet protectors we use for all of our royal icing transfers. And you can download the rosette practice transfer sheet HERE or by clicking the preview image below!

Royal Icing Roses 101 Video

We’ve made it to the best part, Besties! But I hope you took the time to read the tips and other resources I’ve provided to set you up for success in making royal icing florals! In this video, you’ll see exactly how to make rosettes, ribbon roses and traditional roses. I hope this video is helpful for you as we start out journey in creating a royal icing garden! The next part of our series will be coming soon, so I hope you start practicing! You can find the video HERE or by clicking on this photo. Enjoy!

I hope the first part of our new florals series has been helpful for you! I can’t wait to see your flowers!!! And make sure you’ve subscribed to receive our weekly newsletter, so you don’t miss out on the rest of the series! Happy Baking, Besties!