Royal Icing collars and flooding work

This tutorial will show you how to make delicate royal icing collars to decorate the edges of your cakes, and also, using the same basic method, will show how it can be applied to all sorts of other uses!

You’ll need clear film, trex or vegetable fat, the image/collar you’ll be recreating in icing

Stick your image to a cake card of similar size and then cover the whole image with a sheet of clear film. Make sure it’s stuck down nice and flat!

Smear the entire area with Trex or similar vegetable fat….not too much, but make sure it’s an even layer…this will help you remove the image once it’s set.

Make up a parchment paper/greaseproof paper little piping bag…..start with a triangle and lay it in front of you so you have a 90 degree angle

Pull the top corner down to the bottom- starting to form a cone shape

Roll over the other corner to finish off the cone and ensure you have a sharp point at the top…pull the tails if necessary!

Fold the three tails/corner tips in….this will make sure the bag doesn’t fall apart!

snip twice, once on either side of your fold and fold again….now it’s nice and strong….

Insert a fine tip nozzle…I use PME 1.5

Make up some Royal Icing and take some out onto your board ready to paddle….If you’re making up mulitple colours take enough out and put them into seperate containers..cover them with cling film until you’re ready to use them and also be sure to cover the big bowl as this will be used to make the flooding icing later….

Paddle the icing with an offset spatula to remove any airbubbles….DO THIS PART!!! It’s important as any airbubbles can weaken your outline….

Start to pipe the outline of your shape/collar….if you make a mistake, it can be corrected with a damp paintbrush…

Finish all outlines….

Water down the remaining icing so it becomes runny…the trick to knowing if you’ve reached the perfect consistancy is the 10 second rule….if you run your knife through it, the “cut” line should disappear by the time you’ve counted to 10…if it doens’t you need to add a spot more water…..

This is the messy part now!!… make up another piping bag and fit with a slightly bigger nozzle… a PME 2 or 2.5….the fill the bag with your flooding icing…..working carefully, fill in the gaps!! If the icing needs encouraging use a damp paintbrush to ensure there are NO GAPS!! it’s VITAL that the flooding icing makes contact with your outlines…….put enough on that there is a slight dome effect….then walk away and leave to dry overnight, or longer if possible and if the piece is big….I would always make at least 2 of these just in case as they can break if you look at them the wrong way!!

Once it’s set you should be able to run a small thin pallette knife under it and it’ll release off the film….attach it to your cake with some more royal icing…..if you’ve made other work you can attach to sides of cakes or even to wires….

You can achieve some amazing effects, using different colours and shapes…this can be a lot of fun, but do always make more than one because it can be heartbreaking if they break!!

I have more examples on my fb page….. www.facebook.com/thewhiteboxcakeco

Thanks for looking!!
Sasha x