I have almost 100 cookies to make this week for Vacation Bible School. Their theme is the jungle so I have to make a variety of animals. I was thinking I could do royal icing transfers early in the week and let them harden. I'd bake the cookies on Friday, ice in glace and then lay the RI transfer over the top. Has anyone else done this? How did it work?

Anyone? (Echo echo echo)

Well, it didn't work so hot. I piped the black royal outline, let it dry and then flooded the rest with the colors I needed. They dried well, came off the parchment fine but the black bled in to the rest of the colors. I've never had that happen before. Sigh. Now I have 60 royal animals that I won't use. Thankfully I didn't do all 100 that night! I guess it's back to freehanding them.

Hey - I just saw this post.....

I work with royal icing all the time on my cookies but I've never done a royal icing transfer. Just have to ask...how long did you let the black outline dry before adding all the other colors? Do you think letting it dry longer would've kept it from bleeding?

I want to try one so bad!!!

Hi Ladies - I have done RI transfers with black outlining without a problem when I RI'ed my soccer balls before putting them on the green/blue background.

Here is what I do: I use Antonia74s to start with (I swear by that icing!). Then I add dark cocoa (I use Hersheys Special Dark) to get it about medium brown-ish (a fantastic tip given to me by SweetDreams). I then add Americolor Super Black, but not as black as I will need it to be in the end as I let it sit to deepen. This way you use less black coloring. I let that sit a minimum of ovrnight and a full day as it will deepen with time. Stir occasionally. Pipe your outline and let dry thoroughly. As I was doing white with it, I did not chance it and piped at night and filled the next morning. Let it all dry, pop it off, RI in place and you are good to go! I love RI transfers and just did them with a bunch of bees, ladybugs and a little while ago with a hockey team logo it really worked out well. No pics of those posted yet, but the soccer cookies are in my profile if you want to see those.

I thought I let them dry enough but it was rainy here for a few days. Maybe that made the difference. Normally I freehand all of my cookies but I wanted to try and do the designs earlier in the week so it wouldn't be so much work.

Thanks for the tips Tracy...I'm all pumped up to try one now! A bee on a flower would be sooooo cute to start with.

Bella - Doing the RI images ahead of time is a great idea! Not only does it save you time when you are doing the actual cookies, but it allows the cookies to be even fresher as you can bag them sooner. I have several crazy weeks coming up, but need to make pirate flag cookies for my daughter's class, so I plan to RI the skulls ahead of time. This is something I really take into consideration now when I am doing my designing.

Bakinccc - Oh, it was so fun! Now I just need to pick the pics and get them posted. Just be careful that when you RI it on, that you really lightly coat the background evenly so none of the RI image can chip off. You want it to be as flush as possible to the cookie.

Another option is to drop your RI image onto your newly flooded basecoat. This saves time from having to attach it later and you can drop it in place and move it around carefully with a toothpick to get it right where you want it. Just don't drop it right away as it can sink and don't wait too long or you will get little ripples that won't go away from dropping it on. You will figure out pretty quickly just how long to wait. The only downcheck to this technique is that the basecoat really needs to be a light color if your RI has white or a light color in it or the basecoat color can 'seep' up into the RI image and discolor it, even if the RI image is completely dry.

Have fun!

Well, I let the second batch dry for two days before filling the colors over the black outline and they still bled. You can see it in the links below. One set of monkeys were outlined and filled within 24 hours. The others were outline and then filled two days later. I can't even tell which is which. Sigh. I didn't have time to redo the monkeys so I left them. I wound up freehanding the zebras and giraffes though. Any ideas? I used Wilton's black.

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1383067&done=1

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1383059