Hi, beginner decorator here so bear with me if this seems juvenile... I thought I had the royal icing technique down but when I piped some beads around the edges of my cookies they dried with little holes in almost every bead! The beads looked fine when I piped them and I didn't have any bubbles when I flooded the cookies, maybe my piping was bad? You can kinda see in the picture...
AOh my! usually " holes" are caused by air bubbles, or maybe the icing is a tad thick, that it crusted before piping is completed. Try to pipe on your practice board and experiment with different icing consistency, and watch out for sneaky little bubbles. Your cookies looks delicious, and you did a good job!
ABefore you even fill your bag with RI, you need to work out excess air by spreading a blob onto a flat clean surface with a spatula - back and forth - to work out the bubbles. Like you would with plaster.
Also, never beat your RI on high speed, or with a whisk as this also incorporates too much air.
Hope this helps!
ASweetopia has a great post addressing this exact issue. She has a handful of tips for avoiding it. http://sweetopia.net/2010/02/how-to-prevent-air-bubbles-in-royal-icing/
Oh thank you sugarkissed, I love sweetopia but I have never seen this tutorial before! It helps a lot!
Also Evoir, I only have a handheld electric mixer (I am saving up for a fancy kitchen aid) even the lowest setting on this would be ok? I actually use sweetopia's royal icing recipe ;)
And Peppercorns, I will make sure to try different icings on wax paper before my next project, great idea, dunno why I didnt think of that LOL
AI wonder if by incorporating the extra liquid to make the flooding consistency icing you worked out the air bubbles that were in the thicker icing you used for the beads?
AIf you can bear the elbow grease it's better to make ri by hand, not with a mixer, stand or hand. It should be slow stirring really, not beating or any sort of action that will incorporate air.
The only times I have real air bubble issues are when I can't be bothered to use a wooden spoon, but then I have to spend ages paddling the stuff to rid it of bubbles anyway so it's all a bit pointless.
Sometimes lo-tech really is the way to go.
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Sweetopia has a great post addressing this exact issue. She has a handful of tips for avoiding it. http://sweetopia.net/2010/02/how-to-prevent-air-bubbles-in-royal-icing/
@sugarkissed_net that's a very helpful link to a good photo tutorial.
@kepperson1 by doing most of my cookies with the plastic bottles, I've learned to let the bottles sit upside down for a while before I start decorating. This lets quite a few of the bubbles work themselves out.
Then I don't turn them back up. Scrunch some saran wrap up, and put it in the bottom of a large glass, place the bottle upside down in the glass, take it out - decorate a cookie, put it back in the glass. It keeps the bubbles in the top of the icing (which is the bottom of the plastic bottle). This helps.
Same thing with piping bags, upside down and stay upside down. What's a few drips of icing that you can wipe off your counter later on. No one will ever see those.
..........and if I use a heavy small glass, like a heavy bottomed whiskey glass, I just prop the top end of the bottle or piping bag on something like my KA mixer. No worries.
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