How to Make Royal Icing

Name: How to Make Royal Icing
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 4 cups Powdered Sugar; 5 tablespoons Meringue Powder; Up to 1/2 cup Warm Water

posted by Nancy on May 1, 2019 (updated 2/24/20) // 2 Comments

Jump to Recipe

A quick and easy recipe for Royal Icing that we use again and again. Learn How to Make Royal Icing – it’s easier than you might think!

Full disclosure, we don’t use Royal Icing too much. We almost always use our The Best Buttercream Frosting to frost cookies. But on those rare occasions when Royal Icing is the only option this is the quick and easy recipe that we use. If you’ve been searching for an answer on How to Make Royal Icing, this post is for you!

Our Royal Icing recipe is a quick and easy one that only uses a few ingredients. The one ingredient you may not have in your pantry is Meringue Powder. Meringue powder is an egg white substitute helps the icing harden up and gives it a bit of sheen. You can find it in the baking aisles of most stores and also here at Amazon.

Mix the powdered sugar with the meringue powder in a mixing bowl.

One tablespoon at a time, add warm water to the mixer and mix.

This is the consistency of the icing with a single tablespoon of water.

You will need to add water until you reach the consistency you desire. That will depend on if you are doing outlining or flooding.

Here is our pretty and shiny final product.

Add food coloring as required. We have a fun post with all of our food coloring formulas for our most favorite frosting colors. You can find our Frosting Color Guide here.

Pretty red icing all ready for a decorating bag!

If you are looking for a quick and easy Royal Icing recipe, this one has never let us down. Happy Cookie Decorating!