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Follow this easy step by step guide on How to Make Royal Icing to make sugar cookie icing and to decorate gingerbread houses!
If you are looking for the perfect frosting to glue your gingerbread house together, then you're going to want to use Royal Icing.

Royal Icing is also the perfect icing for decorating sugar cookies!

So I'm going to teach you how to make Royal Icing right here, right now!

MY OTHER RECIPES

Ingredients Needed to Make Royal Icing

This icing is super duper easy and only has 3 ingredients:

You can make this in the bowl of your stand mixer or using a hand mixer.

How To Make Royal Icing

First thing you need to do is beat your egg whites until they are frothy (as pictured above).

Then you will gradually add powdered sugar. Anywhere between 3-4 cups of powdered sugar depending on how big your egg whites are.

Add the vanilla extract to give it a nice flavor. You could use lemon juice, almond extract, or any other extract you prefer (in place of the vanilla) to flavor the icing, just make sure you're using clear extracts to keep the color of the icing white.

Once it's reached a thick and smooth consistency you can place it directly into a zip close bag for storing, or into a frosting bag fitted with tip for immediate use.

If you are wanting to add color to your frosting you would simply beat in your color choice (gel colors work best) at the end, just a drop or two at a time, then decide if the color is to your liking, add more if necessary.

Gingerbread House Glue Recipe

When making a gingerbread house, plain white works for me!

This frosting holds together wonderfully. That little teepee was solid within less than two minutes!

I actually built the remainder of the gingerbread house last night with my kids, and that little teepee was the covering to our porch. The Royal Icing held up so strong that we built a two story house and didn't have any cave-ins! So if you're looking for the perfect glue to build your gingerbread house...

This is it!

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Yields 2 cups

10 minPrep Time

10 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

Instructions

Notes

Helpful Products For This Recipe:

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Follow this easy step by step guide on How to Make Royal Icing to make sugar cookie icing and to decorate gingerbread houses! If you are looking for the perfect frosting to glue your gingerbread house together, then you're going to want to use Royal Icing.

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Today's tutorial is all about how to frost a smooth cake. Getting that nice, smooth finish when icing a cake can take some practice, but I have been asked so many times about how I get my icing so smooth, I've finally put together some instructions that I hope will be helpful. Just remember you have to be patient. My first cake did not look like my current cakes. It took practice - and the right tools.

Update 8/5/16: There's now a video showing the technique towards the end of this post.
See my post on how to beautifully frost your cupcakes!
So to start, let's talk about the tools you'll need:

Icing tips ( this one - Wilton #789 - for icing the sides and this one - Ateco 844 - for piping the border)
Icing bags
Turntable (I use this one)
Icing smoother (I 100% recommend this one over any other)
9 inch offset spatula (I use this one)
Fondant smoother (I use this one)
Viva paper towels (Viva brand specifically)

Let's talk about that icing smoother for a second. I linked to it above, but it's an Ateco smoother that costs less than $5. It is the best money I have ever spent on a tool. I used to use another one, but it was big and clunky and I had no idea how much it hindered my ability to get a nice, smooth cake until I tried this one. It's lightweight, small and easy to use.

In addition to those tools, you'll obviously need a cake and some icing. I used regular American Buttercream ( recipe here). For my cakes that are about this size, I go through about 2 1/2 recipes worth.

For this tutorial, I started with a cake that was already crumb coated and had a layer of icing on the top of the cake. It's important to already have the top layer on the cake and get it as smooth as you can with your offset spatula. It'll get further smoothed later, but it's best to have it smooth now too.

The crumb coat isn't entirely necessary for every cake. Typically chocolate cakes are more likely to need them, since they tend to have more crumbs. But because of the way I add my icing, it's not always necessary. I use an icing tip and bag, which reduces crumbs mixing into the icing.

So to get started from here, you'll want your icing bag fitted with the Wilton #789 icing tip and filled with icing. Starting from the bottom of the cake, pipe icing around the edge, trying to keep even pressure on the bag so that the layer of icing is even.

You'll have multiple layers of piped icing, depending on the height of your cake. The top layer needs to stick above the top edge of the cake. This will be important later for smoothing the top edges/corners of the cake.

When you are done applying the icing to the sides of the cake, it's time to smooth it. This is where the icing smoother comes in. Place it against the side of the cake. You want to hold it straight up and down, as straight as possible. Hold your icing smoother in the same place and use your other hand to turn the turntable. Continue to turn the turntable, scraping the icing off of the smoother occasionally so that there isn't too much buildup. I clean off my smoother regularly and when I scrape the excess icing off of it, I usually also wipe it with a paper towel, so that there isn't anything left on there that will mess up the icing once I place it back on the side of the cake.

Here is an image showing the angle at which I hold the smoother. I really believe the angle makes a big difference in the way the icing smooths. Do not hold it at 90 degrees. The tighter the angle (like shown), the better the excess icing pulls around the cake and fills in gaps.

After doing a few turns of the turntable, you'll notice some gaps that are deeper and should probably be filled in. I usually notice it at the "seems" where the three layers of icing were piped on. At this point, use your offset spatula to add some icing to the gaps. You'll want to have a little excess icing, rather than too little.

Begin smoothing the sides again, pulling the excess icing around the cake to fill in gaps, then wiping off the icing smoother as needed.

Continue working around the outside of the cake, pulling the icing, then scraping it off of the icing smoother. You can fill in more gaps if needed, just keep working the sides until you are happy with it.

You should end up with a cake that looks like this. The sides are mostly smooth and the excess icing from the top is still sticking up above the cake. In some places you may have tiny little holes from the air in the icing. The angle that you hold the icing smoother can make a difference in how many of those you end up with. Again, tighter angle is better. Also, some of those will fill in as we smooth the sides again later with a paper towel.

Next is always the scariest part! The top edges/corners. It was even harder to do these while taking photos. 🙂 The whole icing process took longer than normal, so my icing started to crust a bit and so it's a little drier in the photos than yours should be at this point. You want to work as quickly as you can. If the icing starts to crust, it's harder to work with.

MY OTHER RECIPES

To do the edges, you can use the icing smoother or the offset spatula. I use either, depending on my mood, though often I do feel like the offset spatula gives me more control. Pull the icing in towards the middle of the cake, making the corner level with the top of the cake. The spatula should be at about a 45 degree angle. The excess icing should help fill in any uneven-ness on those top corners as you pull it in.

Go all the way around the cake, until it looks like the one below. Again, my icing is a bit drier than yours should be. Hopefully, your cake top is a bit smoother.

Use your offset spatula to continue to work the icing on the top of the cake and smooth the top edges. Do not mess with the sides or side part of the corners yet. Just try to get the top as smooth as you can, the sides should already be smooth.

Next, we use the paper towel to finish smoothing any imperfections that are left from the offset spatula. Like I said above, I ONLY use Viva paper towels for this. They are the only paper towel I know of that doesn't have raised patterns on it. You'll notice that one side is smoother than the other - that's the side you want against the cake.

I usually start with the top of the cake, since it tends to be rougher and need more work. Along with your paper towel, you'll need the fondant smoother. Place the paper towel on the cake, smoothest side down, and rub in small circular motions with the fondant smoother to smooth out the icing. Press firmly and evenly, but not hard.

Do the same with the sides of the cake, evening out any bumps or air holes.

To help make sharper corners, place the paper towel on the top of cake, letting it hang over the edge and down the side. Placing your fingers against the side of the cake to keep the icing in place, use the fondant smoother to gently push the icing out towards to edge to help make that corner sharp. Do that anywhere you think the edges could use it.

Keep working that paper towel and fondant smoother until you are happy with your cake.

Next, I like to take my offset spatula and remove excess icing at the bottom of the cake and give it a clean edge. The spatula is placed at an angle so that nothing is actually touching the side of the cake, but just the bottom of the spatula side is grabbing the excess icing. Then pull the excess towards you and away from the cake.

Use your other icing tip to pipe on your border. I used Ateco tip 844, but you could also use Wilton 1M, which is similar, or any other tip you prefer.

Sprinkle with some spraaaankles!

And you're done! Put your cake on your favorite cake stand, add a few more sprinkles and dig in!! It's time to eat all that hard work. 😉

*Update* For some help with getting the right frosting consistency, check out my new post on how I like to do it.

UPDATE 8/4/16: Here's a video showing the technique on a recent cake!
This page includes affiliate links.

Learn how to decorate Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Practice your smoothing technique on some of these delicious cakes:

Moist and Fluffy Vanilla Cake
(the recipe for the cake in the tutorial above!)

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How to frost a smooth cake with buttercream - Life Love and Sugar

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Today's tutorial is all about how to frost a smooth cake. Getting that nice, smooth finish when icing a cake can take some practice, but I have been asked so many times about how I get my icing so smooth, I've finally put together some instructions that I hope will be helpful.

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Here's my completed - and already devoured - Funfetti Cake! Why are confetti sprinkles so cute, yet so hard to find??? I had to MANUALLY remove all of the chocolate jimmies from a bag to make this cake. In the end, it was worth it. I love the color scheme and all the cute sprinkles on the bottom. I'm also glad I decided to go for four layers. It wasn't too short or too tall...just right! What do you think?

You can see the baking strips I use here. They're basically strips of wet fabric that cool the edges during baking so the cakes bake more evenly!

As you can see in the video I added a thin crumb coat after first assembling the layers, allow crumb coat to set in the fridge for an hour or so then do a thicker final coat where you get the edges clean. Allow to set in the fridge again and then add the confetti sprinkles and ganache drizzle. For the Ganache heat, the cream up to just under a boil then pour over white chocolate and butter. You can play with the proportions on the ganache and use only cream and white chocolate if you desire as well. Allow to site for a couple units and then whisk until there are no lumps. You might have to pop into the microwave for 20 seconds on half power if there are bits of unmelted chocolate. Add a drop of pink food coloring (I use AmeriColor soft gel food coloring). The color will lighten slightly when the ganache cools.

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Here's my completed -- and already devoured -- Funfetti Cake! Why are confetti sprinkles so cute, yet so hard to find??? I had to MANUALLY remove all of the chocolate jimmies from a bag to make this cake. In the end, it was worth it.

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Oh my gosh, how cute are these Easter Bunny Mini Cakes? Once we made our Easter Bunny Cupcakes, we couldn't stop and had to make do another Bunny cake. These Easter Bunny Mini Cakes will be the perfect dessert for your Easter celebration.

How to Make Bunny Mini Cakes

You will need:

For our multi-colored cake layers for the Bunny Mini Cakes, we made up two boxes of White Cake Mix and split them into four equal portions. We used a food scale to measure each portion but as you can see in these pictures it was approximately 2 cups of cake mix for each color. Using our Wilton Color Right Food Coloring we tinted the cake batter four different colors - Pink, Yellow, Purple and Blue.

Here are the amounts of food coloring that we used to achieve these pretty Easter colors:

Pink = 6 drops of Wilton Color Right Pink Food Coloring
Yellow = 1 drop of Wilton Color Right Yellow Food Coloring
Purple = 10 drops of Wilton Color Right Pink Food Coloring and 4-5 drops of Wilton Color Right Blue Food Coloring
Blue = 3 drops of Wilton Color Right Blue Food Coloring

Line a medium sized cookie sheet with parchment paper and pour the cake batter into the cookie sheet. To get the batter evenly dispersed we poured it into the cookie sheet and then let it settle on a flat surface for 15-20 minutes. We baked the cake according to the instructions on the box for 20 minutes. It was perfectly cooked. The edges were a tiniest bit thinner than the rest of the cake, but not by much.

Here are our four cakes, ready for assembly. We used a round biscuit cutter to cut out our layers.

We used the round cookie cutter to cut out our cake layers. There will be some left-over cake when you use the round cookie cutters. (But we used ours to make these pretty Springtime Cupcakes in a Jar so it was a win-win.)

Here are all four cake layers for our Bunny Mini Cakes. Now on to the frosting!

Make up a batch of our Best Buttercream Frosting. It is super easy to make and so very delicious. You can find the recipe and detailed instructions here.

Add a circle of frosting between each layer of cake. We didn't add a complete layer of frosting between the layers because we didn't want the frosting to over-power the cake.

Using a Wilton 2D frosting tip and a decorating bag, pipe on swirl on three full circles of buttercream frosting on top of the cupcake.

To make the bunny ears you will need Jumbo Marshmallows. In a pinch, you could use a regular sized marshmallow for the ears but the proportion of the ears won't be correct and your Bunny Cupcake might look more like a mouse than a rabbit. You will also need some Sparkling Sugar or Sanding sugar in pink. You can easily make your own Sparkling Sugar ... we have all the step by step directions you'll need right here.

Using the picture above as a guide, slice off two diagonal pieces of marshmallow from the flat end of the marshmallow. Lay the stick part of the marshmallow in the pink sparkling sugar. Now you have your pink bunny ears!

Stick the pink marshmallow bunny ears into the buttercream frosting and use a mini jelly bean or a pink sixlet to make your bunny nose!

Don't forget the Buttercream Frosting Bunny Tail!

We love how this Bunny Mini Cakes turned out! Super adorable and a fun change of pace from a traditional cupcake. These fun treats will look great on our Easter Dessert Table, a baby shower or even a kid's party.
**This post contains affiliate links but we only recommend products that we actually used and liked. Thanks for supporting Two Sisters!

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Oh my gosh, how cute are these Easter Bunny Mini Cakes? Once we made our Easter Bunny Cupcakes, we couldn't stop and had to make do another Bunny cake. These Easter Bunny Mini Cakes will be the perfect dessert for your Easter celebration.

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Don't be fooled by the ingredients. The Crescent rolls stuffed with apple, cinnamon sugar and Mountain Dew does something similar to magic in the pan.

The apple is the queen of autumn foods and you can make miracles with it. If you share my love for anything made with apples, then this cinnamon-apple-crescent roll fantasy is exactly what you need to try.

I made it for the first time and we were charmed by the taste. The smell of cinnamon and apples is what characterizes this simple dessert that melts in your mouth because it is soaked in apples and their juice.

I believe that a combination with pears or peaches would also be fine, and if everything is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, mmmmm ... Ah-mazing !

The method is simple:
Wash the apples, peel and cut into eight equal slices. Unwrap the crescent roll and separate the triangles. Place a piece of apple on each triangle of dough (on a wider side) and roll it in a croissant. Butter a 13 x 9-inch baking dish. In a separate bowl, combine the butter, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla, mix until you get a liquid mixture without lumps and pour over the rolls. Pour soda (7up or Mountain Dew) between rolls (but not over) and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until they become golden brown.
Additionally, a few minutes later, mine story ends as the last dumplings was gone, my housemates said the dessert was nice and that's the most important thing - we enjoyed the little things and made a completely normal day better by this fine dessert.
Hopefully, I managed to take a couple of shots to show you.

Ingredients

Instructions

About Sarah Kozowski

Hi! Welcome to my blog! I'm Sarah- I do part-time job at a kindergarten and in my free time i love to cook, take photos and go jogging. I'm recipe developer, photographer, writer, and taste tester behind this blog. I develop my recipes and photos through good old fashioned trial and error, some days I have more success than others, as you can judge by the photos here. Grab a cup of coffee (or beverage of your choice) and stay with me awhile, poke through recipes, pick your favourite and reach out to me if you have any questions! View all posts by Sarah Kozowski

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Crescent Roll Apple Dumplings - Sugar Apron

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Don't be fooled by the ingredients. The Crescent rolls stuffed with apple, cinnamon sugar and Mountain Dew does something similar to magic in the pan. The apple is the queen of autumn foods and you can make miracles with it.

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Old Fashioned Hot Milk Cake is a light and fluffy vanilla cake. This Depression-Era treat is made from simple ingredients and perfectly sweet, even when served plain.

I have a special place in my heart for milk.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, being from America's Dairyland is no joke. My grandfather worked at a dairy for part of his life, and my mom still talks about how he would bring milk home in glass bottles for the family to share.

When I was pregnant with my son, Calvin, milk was my one and only pregnancy craving. Being the parent of two small children, milk is my only guarantee to nutrition, day in and day out. The day might end with corn dogs or chicken tenders, but at least milk will be there to help out!

MY LATEST RECIPES

One of my favorite recipes has been passed down from my grandma, a cake from the Depression Era called Hot Milk Cake. Ingredients could be limited in those days, so recipes for traditional Hot Milk Cake took advantage of scarce resources.

I have updated her version to include a full stick of butter and yields a moist, delicious cake that is mild yet sweet. Normally served plain, Hot Milk Cake really doesn't need any trappings.

Even my chocolate-frosting-obsessed husband has remarked that Hot Milk Cake is outstanding "as is."

If that isn't a stamp of approval, I don't know what is!

Save this Hot Milk Cake to your "Desserts" Pinterest board!
And let's be friends on Pinterest! I'm always pinning tasty recipes!
Hot Milk Cake
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Old Fashioned Hot Milk Cake is a light and fluffy vanilla cake. This Depression-Era treat is made from simple ingredients and perfectly sweet, even when served plain. I have a special place in my heart for milk. Born and raised in Wisconsin, being from America's Dairyland is no joke.