Royal Icing versus Buttercream:
Crumb Coating
To apply a crumb coat, take some of your buttercream icing and thin it with extra of whatever liquid is part of the recipe - water, milk, or cream, until you get an almost runny consistency.
When you’re finished, your cake should be covered in a thin, see-through layer of icing. Allow the crumb coat to completely dry. Once the crumb coat has dried all your crumbs will become glued to the surface and the cake will have a protective shell holding it all together.
Royal Icing
If Buttercream is the Queen of Icing, Royal Icing would be the King! It’s a very strong and durable edible and pipable ‘cement’ that is ideal for making icing flowers and for gluing decorations in place. It’s not nearly as versatile and good at multi-tasking as the Queen since it is NOT recommended to cover a cake and it’s rather tasteless, actually. Besides the fact that you could break a tooth! With Royal icing, you’ll want to do a good job of your flowers because they will literally last forever!
Royal icing is limited by its cement-like quality to being used for making icing flowers and other decorations that look great but taste, well, not so great. It can be made with either raw egg whites or meringue powder well in advance of a decorating project.
Made with egg whites, this icing must be kept in a closed container and stored in the refrigerator, but if made with meringue powder, can be stored at room temperature. Once dried, royal icing decorations will literally last forever.
Pros
• Easy to work with. Piped flowers generally require less time to make than hand molded gum paste flowers.
• Makes a great glue for cementing decorations on a cake.
• Its pure white color tints easily and produces true colors.
Cons
• Not suitable for icing your cake’s surface because it dries to a brittle hardness.
• Extremely sweet and rather tasteless.
• Sensitive to both high humidity and grease and will soften.
Buttercream Icing
Buttercream is the most versatile of all the icings. It can be used to fill and cover a cake, pipe decorative borders, and make icing flowers and other decorations. It per-forms all these functions and tastes great too! Buttercream decorations are extremely vulnerable to heat and humidity and will melt away to nothing so treat your cake kindly and keep it in a cool dry place.
Pros
· Can be spread and molded to a perfectly smooth finish.
· Tastes great! And can be flavored to match the type of cake.
· Suitable for every aspect of cake decorating and is easily spread, molded or piped.
Cons
· Most susceptible of all the icings to heat and humidity and will melt.
· Fat content in the icing produces thicker and heavier decorations with less definition and fine features.
Crumb Coating
To apply a crumb coat, take some of your buttercream icing and thin it with extra of whatever liquid is part of the recipe - water, milk, or cream, until you get an almost runny consistency.
When you’re finished, your cake should be covered in a thin, see-through layer of icing. Allow the crumb coat to completely dry. Once the crumb coat has dried all your crumbs will become glued to the surface and the cake will have a protective shell holding it all together.
Royal Icing
If Buttercream is the Queen of Icing, Royal Icing would be the King! It’s a very strong and durable edible and pipable ‘cement’ that is ideal for making icing flowers and for gluing decorations in place. It’s not nearly as versatile and good at multi-tasking as the Queen since it is NOT recommended to cover a cake and it’s rather tasteless, actually. Besides the fact that you could break a tooth! With Royal icing, you’ll want to do a good job of your flowers because they will literally last forever!
Royal icing is limited by its cement-like quality to being used for making icing flowers and other decorations that look great but taste, well, not so great. It can be made with either raw egg whites or meringue powder well in advance of a decorating project.
Made with egg whites, this icing must be kept in a closed container and stored in the refrigerator, but if made with meringue powder, can be stored at room temperature. Once dried, royal icing decorations will literally last forever.
Pros
• Easy to work with. Piped flowers generally require less time to make than hand molded gum paste flowers.
• Makes a great glue for cementing decorations on a cake.
• Its pure white color tints easily and produces true colors.
Cons
• Not suitable for icing your cake’s surface because it dries to a brittle hardness.
• Extremely sweet and rather tasteless.
• Sensitive to both high humidity and grease and will soften.
Buttercream Icing
Buttercream is the most versatile of all the icings. It can be used to fill and cover a cake, pipe decorative borders, and make icing flowers and other decorations. It per-forms all these functions and tastes great too! Buttercream decorations are extremely vulnerable to heat and humidity and will melt away to nothing so treat your cake kindly and keep it in a cool dry place.
Pros
· Can be spread and molded to a perfectly smooth finish.
· Tastes great! And can be flavored to match the type of cake.
· Suitable for every aspect of cake decorating and is easily spread, molded or piped.
Cons
· Most susceptible of all the icings to heat and humidity and will melt.
· Fat content in the icing produces thicker and heavier decorations with less definition and fine features.