Hi! For the first time ever I'm experiencing royal icing that won't dry. It hasn't been a full 24 hours yet, maybe about 20 hours and the icing is tacky to the touch. I'm not sure why this is happening. My bowl/paddle were wiped down with vinegar and we have no humidity these past couple days. Will they eventually dry? I have a party on Sat and I want to bring them, I just don't have time to start all over.
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Did you put in the right amount of meringue powder, or forget some? Altering the albumin content of the recipe could dramatically affect drying time if you think all other variables were the same (water added, ambient humidity, etc.)
I haven't had this happen to me, but I have heard from others that over mixed icing and/ or too much food coloring can prevent drying. Was it a dark color like red or black? It is more likely to happen with those.
This happened to me a few months back. Turns out it was the flavoring that I added to my royal icing batch that was causing the problem. I had added a Magic Line brand, almond flavoring to my RI batch. My icing was still wet the next morning. I made two batches and started over twice before trying a different brand. The Lorann brand worked perfectly and I will now only use that in my icing.
The same thing happened to me a couple of nights ago. I think it might have been the sugar in my icing. I used glazing sugar which is powdered sugar without the starch I think. Tried it twice with the same results so I'm not going to use that again.
Yeah, Jan, glaze will dry a lot more slowly because it does not have egg white in it. The protein in the white contributes to the quick-drying properties of royal icing.
Getting fat/grease in your icing will keep it from setting. Even trace amounts will ruin your whole batch.
