I have a question. When you need royal icing that is a dark color and requires quite a bit of food coloring ie) red or black, is there something you do or add to your icing to make it dry hard and stiff?

I recently made some little pieces of artwork for a cake and I used the wilton recipe for royal icing. The pieces that only had a little food coloring (yellow) dried hard and peeled off the wax paper just fine.

But my pieces that were black and red (and I had to use quite a bit of food coloring gel to achieve their color) never fully dried and broke when I tried to get them off the wax paper.

So any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Carla

My suggestion would be to start with a thicker icing, or add powder sugar or cornstarch to the icing when you are coloring it to thicken it back up.