This recipe is great! I dries hard like it should. But i actually added another cup of powdered sugar to get the consistency i wanted. (as is it comes out runny) I also added a tsp of vanilla instead of the lemon, and it still came out good. I will definately use this recipe again and often!
I used this icing to put together a gingerbread house (made with real, heavy gingerbread) and it worked wonderfully! It hardens quickly so your house will stay together, but you need to keep it in an icing bag or covered so it doesn't dry out in the bowl. Oh, I also left out the extract, which doesn't change the icing at all except for the taste.
I used this icing on rolled sugar cookies with great results. Yes, it was a little runny, but rather than adding more powdered sugar, I just used my pastry bag with a small round tip to pipe the icing over the top of each cookie, creating a beautifully finished look when dry. The icing took a few hours to dry completely, but was indestructable after that. Stored/froze well and tastes yummy; the lemon adds a nice flavor!
This is a good recipe. If it's coming out runny it's because you're not beating it enough. I let my mixer go for 5 minutes and beyond until I get peaks. It's shiny and tastes good too. By the way, did you know you can actually freeze royal icing? Just thaw and beat again and it works great.
This was a great icing recipe...I was looking for a keeper to use with my sugar cookies (The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies from this site by the way are the BEST...) This recipe worked GREAT with the pasteurized egg whites that come in a carton from the egg section, I was making cookies for my daughters pre-school class so regular raw egg whites were out of the question. I did add a 5th cup of powdered sugar as I wanted a stiffer icing. Worked and dried beautifully...thanks!
As others have mentioned it's a bit runny. If you're using it as gingerbread house glue don't put it on too thickly or else it takes very long to dry (just like real glue)! I'm thinking that it would be best to use this icing mostly as glue and then maybe a fluffier icing for decorative iced accents. As far as decorating gingerbread cookies though it worked quite nicely! You can dip them in it (like someone mentioned for biscotti) or decorate them with it or both. I posted a photo of my cookies and the initial stages of our very-sloppy gingerbread houses in my Cook's Photos.
This is a great recipe. I used 1/2 cup pasteurized egg whites from a carton. If your icing is too thin, it's not because you do not have enough powdered sugar, it's because you need to beat this type of icing for A LONG TIME. I beat mine for about 5-7 minutes on high to get to a "flooding" consistency and about 8-10 minutes for "outlining" consistency for decorating cookies. Just keep beating...it will thicken up. This is a meringue icing...JUST BEAT IT!! ;)
Recipe is quite misleading - I ended up using over a pound of confectioner's sugar to make it stiff enough to pipe onto gingerbread people to adhere decors on. Maybe if I were to ever use this recipe again, I'd use just one egg white and take it from there. I had a LOT of waste after adding all that sugar to stiffen it up.
I was just shy of 4 cups of icing sugar, but I had already cracked the 4 eggs needed to make a whole batch. I didn't want to waste them, so I added them all anyways. At first the icing was really runny, but it started to harden fairly quickly after I applied it to my gingerbread cookies (Eileen's Spicy Gingerbread cookies from this site). Even using your standard ziplock sandwich bag to apply the icing it went on smoothly. I was quite impressed with this recipe overall!
I used rum extract (artificial) instead of lemon, but I think next time I may try the lemon or maybe almond or vanilla. Two thumbs up!
