I have made two royal icing batches now to make drop flowers and neither batch is fully hardening. I am 100% positive nothing came in contact with buttercream or shortening - the only thing I can think of is that I was making burgundy flowers and I had to use so much color that it compromised the icing. I have made numerous batches of royal before and have never had this problem - could it be the color? If so, how can I get around that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have had that same problem where too much color compromises the consistency, oddly enough also trying to use the burgundy color. Maybe adding more powdered sugar, a little at a time, would get it to stiffen up again. I've never tried re-stiffening with royal icing, just buttercream, so I'm not sure how well it would work, but maybe it's worth a try. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come to your rescue!

Thanks

We had problems with this last week in class. Our instructor thought it was the humidity. We wern't using burgundy though!

Don't add more sugar...add more meringue powder. This is what causes the royal icing to harden and dry. Ideally, on batches where you know you're going to use a great deal of color, you would add an additional few teaspoons or tablespoon of meringue powder to the recipe.