[Cookie Decorating] RI Bubbles: How to Prevent Bubbles in Your Royal Icing

🫧💥 Royal icing makes super cute cookies that you can stack and send to your favorite people, but can be one of the hardest cookie toppings to work with (missing you fondly, buttercream). From getting the right consistencies to avoiding color bleed, royal icing is not for the faint of heart. 💔 A big issue cookie bakers face when using royal icing is air bubbles in their royal icing mix. The bubbles can create icing craters in your dried details or unsightly bumps at the top of your crust, so let’s cover some ways to avoid or reduce bubbles in your royal icing.

Side note: I’ve been baking royal icing sugar cookies for years, and let me tell you right now, it’s impossible to get rid of every single bubble in your icing, but there are some strategies you can use to reduce them a lot!

Royal Icing Bubbles - Use the paddle attachment on your mixer.

🥄 If you are using a stand mixer (think: KitchenAid), opt for the paddle attachment instead of the whisk attachment. This will allow you to mix your ingredients, but the paddle doesn’t allow as much air into the mix as a whisk does. Ever wonder why you use a whisk when making buttercream? That air it allows into the mix makes it light and fluffy, but you want the opposite in your royal icing mix.

My royal icing recipe has me whisk my water and meringue powder together before adding my powdered sugar. What I do is whisk as normal and then swap out the whisk for the paddle attachment and go from there!

Royal Icing Bubbles - Let your royal icing sit.

🥣 A weird move but let me tell ya - it works! Letting your freshly made batch of royal icing sit in the bowl covered will allow the air bubbles to slowly rise to the surface of your royal icing. Nothing, and I mean n-o-t-h-i-n-g, is more satisfying than taking a spatula to the top and popping the bubbles, one right after the other! The longer you let it sit, the more bubbles you’ll be able to pop. ⏰ I like to make a fresh batch a few hours before I need to ice the cookies so it can have enough time to let the bubbles rise.

Royal Icing Bubbles - Shake it off.

🕺 If we know anything from T-Swift, it's that a good shake can do wonders. The same thing works with royal icing. If you have a vibrating back massager or a washing machine that has a loose leg - put your bowl of icing on it and shake those bubbles up to the top. 💥 Since bubbles are just trapped air, the bubbles will rise and the icing will fall allowing you to work faster and get the bubbles to the surface more quickly. Use your spatula and pop those suckers and you’ll be good to go to bag your icing!

Royal Icing Bubbles - Make the icing thicker.

💧⛔ Not everyone will like this step (especially if you’re a slower decorator) but thicker icing holds bubbles left in your royal icing mix in place. Thicker icing means the bubbles can’t rise as quickly and won’t poke through the top of your flood or make those weird-looking bumps.

A thinner flood means there is a lot more water in the mix and water allows bubbles to glide up to the top of your flood and give you a headache.

Thicker icing does mean less water content and you might find that your icing is crusting faster than normal on you, my suggestion is to take a tablespoon out of your meringue powder so the icing won’t crust as fast but you can still use the thicker icing to stop the bubbles from budging.

Royal Icing Bubbles - The Helicopter Method.

🚁 “GET TO THE CHOPPA” (sorry, I had to get my Arnold Schwarzenegger quote in there), but the most important and easiest way to avoid bubbles in your flood is this one step right here.

The helicopter method sounds techy (as techy as we can get in the kitchen), but it's very elementary (and hilarious). Once you’ve bagged your icing but before you’ve sealed off the top, 🥏 take that bag and start whipping it over your head like the blades of a helicopter. I find it more effective to yell “GET TO THE CHOPPA” as I do it, but you’ll find what works for you.

The longer you do the helicopter, the fewer bubbles you’ll have in your icing. What you are doing when you wing it around like you just don’t care is forcing the icing to the tip of your piping bag and forcing the air bubbles up so you can let them escape out of the top before you seal it off. The longer you do the helicopter, the more bubbles you’ll get, and this is especially good for those tiny bubbles that seem to not want to budge.

Royal Icing Bubbles - Cut the tip of your piping bag smaller.

✂️ If you’ve followed all the tips so far, you have very few bubbles left in your icing, but you still will have a few, so cut your piping tip smaller.

Why? This will allow you to pop the leftover bubbles as they exit the piping bag. The bubble is bigger than the ti,p so when you squeeze the icing out, the bubble pops as the icing flows. You’ll hear little popping sounds as the icing bag is being squeez,ed and that’s the sweet, sweet sound of the bubbles going to bubble heaven.

Royal Icing Bubbles - Hold your piping bag closer to the surface of the cookie

🤏 You might not be a big fan of cutting the tip smaller, and if you aren’t, my suggestion is to hold the piping bag closer to the top of your cookie as you flood.

This will allow you to do the same thing as cutting the tip smaller, but you’ll be popping the bubbles using the sides of your piping bag as you squeeze. Let me paint a mental image for you: You’re holding the bag closer to the cookie, which forces the icing out flatter and as you move your piping bag around the cookie, the pressure from the cookie and the icing bag will pop any bubbles that might make it through the tip.

Royal Icing Bubbles - Shake your cookies

📳 Have you ever been so mad at your cookies that you just want to shake a little sense into them? Well, now’s your chance! Shaking a cookie after you’ve flooded it will allow your icing to settle so you get those super pretty tops we all know and love, and it will allow any leftover bubbles to rise to the surface so you can pop them.

Like I said before, it’s impossible to get rid of every single bubble, so the few that make it through our list can be handled with the tip of your scribe. A quick tap will allow you to pop them before your icing crusts, and you’ll be able to have those smooth, bubbleless tops on your royal icing sugar cookies.

Royal Icing Bubbles - Hail Mary: Switch your meringue powder.

So, there you have it. My tips that I use every day to avoid bubbles in my royal icing mix. If you go through each step, you’ll come out the other side with gorgeous cookies and about 5 pesky bubbles that make it to the final boss round.

Still, suffering from bubbles even after all these tips and tricks? It might be time to make a switch on your meringue powder. This can often be a culprit of bubbles, and a simple switch can make all the difference. The meringue powder I use and suggest to my bakers is Royal Batch by Bakety Bake. Full disclosure - they're a Baking it Down Podcast sponsor (but I only allowed them because I liked their product that much). It has white food coloring, vanilla extract, and corn syrup already in it so all you have to do is whip it up and get all the compliments from your family and clients!

You can use the code “TWINS” to save 10% on your Royal Batch order!

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