All of a sudden I’m having trouble with my royal icing, and I’ve never had this problem before. After it’s dried, it looks fine and then later on, like the next day or even a few hours later, it’s all blotchy! See the above picture. It was totally fine this morning and then a few hours later it looked like that. And it was already from the day before. What causes this??
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Do you put the cookies Ina container after decorating? I find it makes my cookies blotchy.
@Econlady posted:Do you put the cookies Ina container after decorating? I find it makes my cookies blotchy.
Well I put them in a container after they had already dried so they will stay fresh and I didn’t stack any on top of each other. It looked fine this morning (I decorated yesterday) and then when I went to put them in baggies I noticed the blotching. I’ve read that it could be humidity and the blue food coloring? But I don’t know how to prevent it!
@Kimbercakes posted:Well I put them in a container after they had already dried so they will stay fresh and I didn’t stack any on top of each other. It looked fine this morning (I decorated yesterday) and then when I went to put them in baggies I noticed the blotching. I’ve read that it could be humidity and the blue food coloring? But I don’t know how to prevent it!
I have to leave them out for at least 24 hours.
Some say it's butter bleed, but I think it has more to do with color migration if the icing takes too long to dry. Prematurely boxing or bagging icing that is not quite dry all the way through could do this.
Here's a link to other posts people have made here on the topic of spotty, speckled, or stained royal icing (which I found by searching our forums using the Advanced Search feature in the upper right of the site) : LINK HERE. If you scroll through, you'll find other takes on this issue (especially in the post about grease spots). Hope this helps!
@Julia M. Usher posted:Here's a link to other posts people have made here on the topic of spotty, speckled, or stained royal icing (which I found by searching our forums using the Advanced Search feature in the upper right of the site) : LINK HERE. If you scroll through, you'll find other takes on this issue (especially in the post about grease spots). Hope this helps!
Very interesting links! 
Once I had such similar blotches. I had started decorating too quickly. I usually put my cookies on kitchen paper after baking so that the fat pulls out a little.
Thanks for the Links. 
So I read somewhere to put the cookie in the oven and put it next to the oven light so it gets barely warm. I did that and it changed the whole color to the darker color, so it doesn’t look blotchy anymore, it just made the whole thing darker.. which was fine. So I guess it was from the butter and maybe it was too hot in the house. Anyway, I’m glad I could fix it!
@Kimbercakes posted:So I read somewhere to put the cookie in the oven and put it next to the oven light so it gets barely warm. I did that and it changed the whole color to the darker color, so it doesn’t look blotchy anymore, it just made the whole thing darker.. which was fine. So I guess it was from the butter and maybe it was too hot in the house. Anyway, I’m glad I could fix it!
Or maybe the icing wasn't completely dry. Tough to know if it was from the butter unless you were to do a controlled test without butter in the cookie. I've had similar icing discoloration on cookies with no butter in them. But glad the trouble was fixed!
