I have some ready to roll fondant and ready to roll royal icing in the same colour and would like to knead them together - will they dry ok together?

Thanks in advance?

Hannah x

Hi, I haven't heard anything like Ready to Roll Royal Icing. Can you be a bit more clear about it please?

Its called RegalIce on the box - its a ready to roll block that sets hard like royal icing.

Hannah x

Are you by any chance form UK? RegalIce is a brand. It is Sugarpaste/ Fondant.

RegalIce is sugarpaste, not royal icing, and sugarpaste is fondant.

Royal icing is not something that can be pre-made & packaged. You can purchase it as a dry mix and add water to it, or you can make it yourself with icing sugar (powdered sugar), meringue powder (or egg whites), and water. It can't be "mixed" with fondant/sugarpaste, either while wet or once dry, because it has no flexibility and will ruin the fondant.

Fondant/sugarpaste dried hard when exposed to air. If all sides of it are exposed to air, it will dry very hard. If only the top is exposed to air, but the the underside is protected or on top of cake (moist), it will stay soft enough to eat for some time (until the moisture in the cake dries out).

You can mix all types of fondant together. You do need to make sure that the two types are kneaded together well, because even though they look like exactly the same color, if not fully combined, you can still get a streaky appearance.

Fondant/sugarpaste dries even harder (more like Royal) when tylose, gum trag, cmc, or gum tex is added to it, thereby making it gum paste.
Gum paste can be kneaded together with fondant in order to create sturdier & faster drying fondant. Doing this can compromise the taste of the fondant and isn't recommended for covering a cake. It's used more for making flowers &/or decorations.

HTH
Rae

We do get ready to roll royal icing in blocks like marzipan in Europe and in my honest opinion the royal icing one I tried was awful stuff.

You can make ready roll royal icing at home in basically the same way as making traditional royal but you use less liquid egg white and you knead it into a dough rather than beat/whip it.

This is an old way of preparing royal icing that can be rolled rather than spread and was thought to me by my grandmother who is in her 80's, it's a less commonly used technique today as most people just don't know how to do it. It's like a fondant but royal icing flavoured.

I would be careful about mixing products that are different as they both behave differently. Ready roll royal icing dries differently to fondant and it's almost brittle in comparison to the flexibility in fondant.

I would imagine that you might mix the two together and think they feel the same and look the same but when they have had time to dry out I think you would have a noticable texture difference and would be able to tell which is ready roll royal and which is fondant. One would be hard dry the other would not.

I have not tried the "regal ice" but the irsh brand ready roll royal icing is dreadful stuff in my opinion.

banba, what great info. I didn't know that there is ready rolled royal icing.

Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for the info! I did a more thorough google search and found what you've mentioned.

I have to admit, it sounds absolutely silly. I mean, RI is generally used to pipe with and if you need something that has to be cut or molded, then fondant or gum paste are available. They all taste like sugar and not much else unless deliberately flavored. Somebody had too much time on their hands, me thinks........

Since RI is brittle when dry, I agree, that mixing it with fondant would probably result in something undesirable.

Rae

Royal icing has been used to cover cakes for a long time, I heard and saw roll out royal icing before I ever fondant.

In Europe it's not just typically used for piping but extensively used for covering cakes.

Fondant is a newer concept, thank god cos I love working with it, still not mad about the texture though!

I would even argue that fondant is a progression from the royal icing as people found it hard to cover a cake in royal and work with it in general and it was also time consuming as it took weeks to fully dry out!

So something pliable was needed for ease of use and fondant was created IMO. using newer ingredients that became available to pimp up the original royal icing recipe.

Plus now that I think about it back in the days of no fridges and little or no cupboards, what mouse or little undesirable was going to get through a solid royal iced cake and then a layer of marzipan to boot!