Make Ahead Cake Decorations

When I decorate cookies, I often have leftover royal icing and instead of tossing it, I use it to make rose decorations that I keep on hand for decorating cakes in a pinch.

Just let the royal icing roses dry completely and then store them in an airtight container. They'll keep for months and they are so handy to have on hand.  And, they're so pretty that no one will even think for a second that they were made in advance and your cake was a breeze to decorate.

Here's how:
Whip the royal icing until it is very stiff and tint it using gel coloring. I like to make two-toned roses so I tinted some rose and some cream. Fit a pastry bag with a petal tip. My preference is a Wilton #103.

I used a rubber scraper to spread some rose colored royal icing on the inside of my piping bag.

Then I dropped in the cream colored icing. This will give me a nice two-toned effect and keep the pink color just on the edges of the petals.

Adhere a small piece of parchment to a flower nail. Pipe a dollop of icing on the center.

Add a petal around the dollop. When you use a petal tip, it's essential that the narrow end of the tip be up as you pipe. This gives you realistic looking thin-edged petals.

Keep working around your dollop of icing and add two more petals to completely go around the dollop which is the center of the rose.

Add another layer of petals. I stopped after the second layer since I wanted small roses but you can keep going if you want to make a bigger rose.

Set the roses on a sheetpan to dry completely. I let mine dry for two full days and then I removed them from the parchement and put them in a single layer in an airtight container.

Using a #67 Wilton tip, I also made some leaves.

Before I add my handy dandy rose and leaf decorations to a cake, I experiment with placement on a sheetpan first to get them exactly how I want them.

A pretty cake that was a cinch to decorate.

Rose Topped Sugar Cookies

I made these rose topped sugar cookies just for fun so that I could use the royal icing baby roses I made a while ago. I think the look is simple and sweet.

To decorate the cookies,  I first added a cream base coat of royal icing and let it dry.

Next, using an ordinary table knife, I spread on a thin layer of light pink royal icing. I wanted the icing to have texture and look like an iced cake.

When the pink icing is still wet, add your royal icing rose and you're done.

Baby Royal Icing Roses

These tiny roses can be saved in an airtight container and used to decorate sugar cookies and cakes.

After decorating my shortbread cookies yesterday I had some leftover royal icing and couldn't resist trying to make some baby roses that I could dry and save for decorating sugar cookies and cakes.

I'm so glad I gave this a shot because it worked well. I was able to utilize my leftover icing and the flowers are pretty and sturdy.

Here's how I made them:

I beat the royal icing until it was very stiff and then tinted it pink for the roses and green for the leaves.

I used the same pastry tip to make the roses and leaves — I used a Wilton #67 leaf tip.

All I did was lay out a piece of parchment paper and start piping.

I made a pink dollop to start the rose and swirled around it a couple of times.

Then I took the green icing and piped a tiny leaf being sure to start close to the base of the rose so that it would adhere.

Be sure to let the roses dry completely before carefully removing and storing in an airtight container.

Just a tiny bit of icing made dozens of roses and as always, I got better with practice.