SusieJ's Advent Calendar December 20, 2011

Decorating: Flooding with royal icing

Flooding is one of the useful techniques taught in decorating class. The name comes from the icing "flooding" from the pastry bag into a constrained area; Wilton calls this Color Flow. It's simple, but needs practice to get the right consistency and best learn to control the icing.

You've often seen this technique with cut-out sugar cookies. The baker at the Not-So-Humble Pie blog has an excellent visual tutorial.

The technique can be used on cookies, or on wax paper, so that the items can dry and be placed on cake or cupcakes. Working on wax paper also lets you trace a pre-printed design.

Using your favorite recipe, make a batch of royal icing. Dye it the colors you would like. With a #2 decorating tip, outline the design onto the cookie or wax paper. Outline the entire design, but only large areas (at least a quarter of an inch). Fine details should be piped on top of the wet or dry flooding. For long, narrow areas, consider not flooding, but piping a ribbon of royal icing.

[Jake in the snow: I'm so glad we didn't buy him a white or grey coat.]Thin the dyed royal icing very slowly; this will be tedious. In my decorating class, we added water using a small, flat icing spatula, dipping the spatula into water and stirring the water into the icing. Because so little water is stirred in each time, the process requires lots of dipping. But the difference between too much and too little water is very small. The consistency is right when a bit of icing dropped back into itself takes ten seconds to disappear.

Fill a clean bag with #2 tip with each color. Gently squeeze the icing into the outlined area. Keep the tip close to the surface, and move slowly side to side to flood the area with icing. It takes some practice to get the right speed for squeezing not too fast and not too slow.

Keep the icing not in decorating bags covered with plastic wrap to prevent the top layer of icing drying out and dried bits from clogging the tip. If the tip does clog, don't try to force the icing though it. It is possible to force the tip out of the bag in an explosion of icing and curse words. Pour the icing into another small bowl or cup, fish out any dried icing bits, clean out the tip, and try again.