why royal icing?
heyyy... i know to use royal icing for flowers etc.. but one article i read said you can ice a cake with royal icing? why would you if it gets hard? just askin
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Tracy Deadman on
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Hi Lois,I was interested by your post :) I'm English and was married 20 years ago now. We had a traditional English wedding cake of rich fruit, marzipan and Royal Icing. I remember it being the most delicious cake I'd ever tasted. I dug a little on the internet and found the following which I though was quite interesting......
Royal icing gets its name from having been the traditional icing for fruitcake which was the wedding
cake of choice among English royalty, and then among the general English
population. Along with marzipan, fondant, and other rolled or formed icings, it
has the advantage of sealing in freshness so that the cake in question could be
made days in advance and still be tasty and moist upon serving. If a wedding
cake needs to be made more than a few days in advance, royal icing is frequently
used in tandem with marzipan, which is cut and formed to fit exactly the
particular dimensions of the cake. Rolled fondant was derived from traditional British fondant recipes which were actually poured over a cake and allowed to harden to seal in moisture (R.I). British immigrants took their recipes to Australia & America where changes were made in the 1950’s to advance the sugar craft art. The earliest “rolled fondant” recipes are found in American books date back to the early 1980’s
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Permalink Reply by Linda Wolff on
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Tracy, that is great information! I too had wondered why anyone would put such a hard icing on a cake. Being in my 60s, for most of my life time, here in American, butter cream has pretty much been the common standard, and fondant being the standard for higher priced and more special occasion cakes. Of course, that is changing and fondant is being used much more frequently. When I was a little girl, very fancy cakes were the little petite fours covered in poured fondant, which is close to the royal icing. I still love little petite fours, but they were never completely hard, just crusted over. I don't think I have ever had a cake that is completely covered in a whipped royal icing that drys hard as a brick, unless the royal icing that is being talked about is the poured fondant.
Tracy Deadman said:
Hi Lois,I was interested by your post :) I'm English and was married 20 years ago now. We had a traditional English wedding cake of rich fruit, marzipan and Royal Icing. I remember it being the most delicious cake I'd ever tasted. I dug a little on the internet and found the following which I though was quite interesting......
Royal icing gets its name from having been the traditional icing for fruitcake which was the wedding
cake of choice among English royalty, and then among the general English
population. Along with marzipan, fondant, and other rolled or formed icings, it
has the advantage of sealing in freshness so that the cake in question could be
made days in advance and still be tasty and moist upon serving. If a wedding
cake needs to be made more than a few days in advance, royal icing is frequently
used in tandem with marzipan, which is cut and formed to fit exactly the
particular dimensions of the cake. Rolled fondant was derived from traditional British fondant recipes which were actually poured over a cake and allowed to harden to seal in moisture (R.I). British immigrants took their recipes to Australia & America where changes were made in the 1950’s to advance the sugar craft art. The earliest “rolled fondant” recipes are found in American books date back to the early 1980’s
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I hadn't realised that Fondant was a relatively new form of cake covering - I seem to learn something new every day :)
Being that RI is used for heavy fruitcake only a small piece is eaten and subsequently only a tiny slither of icing is recieved with each slice. The part if the icing that touches the marzipan takes on a texture all of it's own and balances perfectly with the dark fruit cake.
Buttercream is a fairly new thing over here for wedding cakes, I think chocolate is zooming ahead in this area too. Really want to work with Cocoform - just waiting for the order x
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Tracy, I think I am speaking mostly for the common everyday run of the mill American who would order a typical occasion cake like a birthday cake. I'm sure that there are very professional decorators that would differ with me, but I am speaking for the average customer. The first time I had ever even seen a fondant covered cake was when I bought my first cake decorating book which was a Wilton Yearbook, dated about 1974-5ish. I was intrigued at how beautiful they were, but also very intimidated at ever trying it. So, for a good 30 or more years, I had been the butter cream queen and just in recent years finally gotten the courage to give fondant a try. (Why did I wait so long! lol)
Tracy Deadman said:I hadn't realised that Fondant was a relatively new form of cake covering - I seem to learn something new every day :)
Being that RI is used for heavy fruitcake only a small piece is eaten and subsequently only a tiny slither of icing is recieved with each slice. The part if the icing that touches the marzipan takes on a texture all of it's own and balances perfectly with the dark fruit cake.
Buttercream is a fairly new thing over here for wedding cakes, I think chocolate is zooming ahead in this area too. Really want to work with Cocoform - just waiting for the order x
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Permalink Reply by suziq auzzi on
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Royal icing gained it's name "royal" when Queen Victoria's pastry-chef went berserk with pure white icing and gumpaste for the wedding cake of the Princess Royal.
Egg-White icing has it's roots back into the 16-17th centuries when it was used as a coating for cakes.
Marzipan was the original moulded cake covering - the Crusaders spread it through Europe. Egg-white icing was the decoration ["glitter like ice"] on marzipan. When the colour white gained in popularity as "purity" for weddings, marzipan lost out to Royal icing. But. As fruitcake was the favoured wedding cake, and it's oils and the moisture from the fruits discoloured and melted the RI, an undercoat was required. Marzipan became the undercoat for RI.
Originally, Royal icing was just egg white and powdered sugar [no starch] applied in very thin coats to the cake so that it could be cut. Sometimes a small amount of glycerine is added to make it slightly softer.
Soft white icing, as it was called, is a sugarpaste made from egg white and powdered sugar with a small amount of glucose syrup included. It became popular in the 19th century. It was the forerunner of what the Americans call "rolled fondant".
With the advent of the Depression, WWI and the Great Depression, and then WWII, the usage of Royal Icing decreased then increased, while Soft White Icing fell from favour. With end of WWII, Royal Icing was back [1940-1950's]. The Empire/Commonwealth countries increasingly used Soft White Icing while Royal Icing began to fall from their favour - too hard in hot climates. The formula for Soft White Icing also changed slightly as gelatine, gelled in water, was substituted for egg albumen. Glycerine was still added to soften the sugar mass.
Note: The word fondant refers to a melt-in-mouth feel.
True Fondant is just boiled sugar water. After kneading, it can be used as the centres in confectionery. When sufficient water is added to it, the resultant pouring fondant can be used as a glaze for small cakes . [Fondant au chocolat is the equivalent to an American Lava Cake ..]
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Suziq - you've done your homework. I didn't realise RI would melt on a fruitcake if marzipan isn't used, I can understand though. Thanks for posting, I've enjoyed looking into it's origins too. I'd never thought about it while I was eating it :) x
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Wow! Suziq, you have been doing your homework! This is great! I am grateful for this information, as I am just now in the process of making my first fruit cake (fruitcakes are NOT very well liked in the USA, so I'm making it more for myself than anyone else. My sister and I will most likely be the only two who will eat it) and I wanted to make it as traditional as possible to an English fruit cake. Awesome information! Thank you!
suziq auzzi said:Royal icing gained it's name "royal" when Queen Victoria's pastry-chef went berserk with pure white icing and gumpaste for the wedding cake of the Princess Royal.
Egg-White icing has it's roots back into the 16-17th centuries when it was used as a coating for cakes.
Marzipan was the original moulded cake covering - the Crusaders spread it through Europe. Egg-white icing was the decoration ["glitter like ice"] on marzipan. When the colour white gained in popularity as "purity" for weddings, marzipan lost out to Royal icing. But. As fruitcake was the favoured wedding cake, and it's oils and the moisture from the fruits discoloured and melted the RI, an undercoat was required. Marzipan became the undercoat for RI.
Originally, Royal icing was just egg white and powdered sugar [no starch] applied in very thin coats to the cake so that it could be cut. Sometimes a small amount of glycerine is added to make it slightly softer.
Soft white icing, as it was called, is a sugarpaste made from egg white and powdered sugar with a small amount of glucose syrup included. It became popular in the 19th century. It was the forerunner of what the Americans call "rolled fondant".
With the advent of the Depression, WWI and the Great Depression, and then WWII, the usage of Royal Icing decreased then increased, while Soft White Icing fell from favour. With end of WWII, Royal Icing was back [1940-1950's]. The Empire/Commonwealth countries increasingly used Soft White Icing while Royal Icing began to fall from their favour - too hard in hot climates. The formula for Soft White Icing also changed slightly as gelatine, gelled in water, was substituted for egg albumen. Glycerine was still added to soften the sugar mass.
Note: The word fondant refers to a melt-in-mouth feel.
True Fondant is just boiled sugar water. After kneading, it can be used as the centres in confectionery. When sufficient water is added to it, the resultant pouring fondant can be used as a glaze for small cakes . [Fondant au chocolat is the equivalent to an American Lava Cake ..]
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