Royal icing

last week we made our fruit cake this week we made the royal icing for it. The teacher doesn't believe in electric whisks,  he reckons not enough air is incorporated and that the clash of metal (bowl to electric whisk) will give the icing a metalic flavour .... blah blah .... at home, i'll be doing it with a whisk! ..... an electric one

This is the recipe we used.

100g icing sugar,
3 egg whites
10ml glycerine
1tsp lemon juice

Beat the egg whites and sugar until smooth.  Add the glyerine and lemon juice and continue beating until thickened.   You'll know when it's thick enough when you pipe a line between two open fingers and the unsupported line doesn't break.

An hour's hand whisking is not a pleasant experience ....It was painful, one poor girl still hadn't got hers to thicken by the end of the lesson.

We stored the icing in a plastic container,  covering it with 2 layers of cling film and a lid.  Once you've excluded all the air and the icing will keep for a couple of weeks.

We kept some back for experimenting with colouring.  It's best to use the pastes as water based colours will water it down and it'll loose some of that hard earned stiffness.  Christmas Red didn't seem to work very well.  Some in the group had tried to colour larger amounts of icing and got hot pink! which just got hotter the more colour they put in....

My fruit cake has been resting at home becoming nice and moist in it's wrapping.  To add to the flavour and moistness we have generously brushed the outside with brandy.  Next week I'll need to take it to the lesson as we'll be covering it with marzipan.  Until then ..... happy baking.x