@Julia M. Usher posted:It's tough to cut the sweetness of ANY icing, as all are mostly sugar. All I can suggest is adding some lemon juice (or cream of tartar; something acidic) to cut the sweetness a bit. Glycerin, glucose, and corn syrup can all be added to soften the bite of royal icing, but glycerin is most effective. Please see the "Toolbox Talk" blog post about "Corn Syrup" (under the Blog area) for all of these details. This article compared all three as softening agents. (Note, though, that the tradeoff of these additives is that the icing may never set all the way through, and thus it may become more difficult to stamp or stencil on the cookies. These additives can also increase the spread of the icing.) Please also search our "forums" (using the magnifying glass icon in the top right of the site). I am pretty sure this topic has been addressed in at least one other thread.
Thank you Julia. Yes, I did see that you mention cream of Tartar in your video, but haven't tried that hack. Will definitely try it. Will read the Toolbox Talk too and try out the ingredients for softening, but I wouldn't want to compromise the drying of the icing, so have to experiment and figure out what will work.
Also, I did try to look for this topic in the Forum, there is a lot of good information and other related knowledge that I gathered however, I couldn't find any topic specifically addressing other substitutes for Royal icing.
I apologize if this is duplicate. I was just curious to see if more experienced cookiers may have something that they have tried and liked.