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Want an easy royal icing that doesn’t require meringue powder or raw eggs? This corn-syrup based royal icing hardens nicely and is perfect for sugar cookies, gingerbread, and holiday decorating. Below is the full recipe + tips to get it just right.
This was the best, easiest and most FUN icing! Thank you for making my mommying life easier while getting to make memories with my kiddos!
-Hope
You will love this Royal Icing Recipe without Meringue Powder
I’ve been decorating cookies for years, and one of the first challenges I ran into was finding a royal icing recipe that didn’t require meringue powder or raw egg whites. I wanted something simple, reliable, and made with ingredients already in my pantry. After lots of trial and error—testing different powdered sugar ratios, adjusting corn syrup amounts, and playing with consistency—I landed on this version. It dries beautifully, holds its shape for piping details, and is forgiving enough for beginners.
I tested flooding, outlining, and piping consistencies to ensure this recipe adapts easily depending on how you want to decorate. If the icing is too thick or too thin, I included simple fixes that work every time.
This no-meringue-powder icing has become a staple in my kitchen, especially during the holidays when I decorate dozens of cookies at once. It dries firm enough for stacking but still has a smooth, glossy finish. My readers have used it on everything from sugar cookies to gingerbread, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive—reliable, easy to mix, and perfect for beginners and experienced cookie decorators alike. My goal is to give you a recipe that works every single time, so you can focus on the fun part: decorating.
Here are a few reasons why you’ll agree this is the best royal icing recipe:
- Ready in just 10 minutes
- 4 simple ingredients plus optional coloring
- Expert tips for proper consistency every time
- Bonus tips for easy storage
- Foolproof steps for perfect icing
What is Royal Icing?
Royal icing is a hard icing that is traditionally sweet. It is most often used to decorate sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and gingerbread houses, sometimes with intricate designs. The ability to color it and the fact that it hardens allows for beautiful designs. This icing is probably most popular for being used to make beautiful sugar cookies.
Royal Icing for Sugar Cookies
This simple royal icing recipe only requires 4 basic ingredients, plus optional gel colors and squeeze bottles for storage. Keep reading for my best tips, and get the full recipe with measurements and directions in the recipe card below.
- Powdered sugar
- Milk or warm water
- Corn syrup
- Vanilla or almond extract
Optional Supplies
How to make Royal Icing without Meringue Powder
My easy recipe has just 4 steps, and the 4th is really just tips for storage.
- Combine ingredients except food coloring. In a medium to small sized mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients (minus the gel food coloring) and mix with a spatula or mixer until smooth.
- Adjust consistency. Add more milk or water, 1 tsp at a time, if the frosting is too thick. You can pick your desired consistency and manipulate it by adding a little water or more powdered/confectioners’ sugar. Ideally, when you lift the spoon or mixing utensil up, you want the royal icing that falls into the bowl to disappear within 5-10 seconds.
- Divide and color. Divide into bowls and add gel food coloring. Transfer to piping bags, pastry bag or squeeze bottles to easily decorate the cookies.
- Store. I really like these squeeze bottles because you can cut the tips to varying widths and they come with caps. However, if you don’t have caps, cover the tops of the squeeze bottles with a wet paper towel to prevent them from drying out if storing overnight.
How to Use This Royal Icing Recipe without Meringue Powder
This classic royal icing recipe is perfect for decorating cookies! Here are a few of my favorite ways to use this icing:
- Decorate sugar cookies: Try my easy and delicious sugar cookie recipe, these cut-out sugar cookies, or my equally tasty and easy-to-make gluten-free sugar cookies!
- Decorate gingerbread cookies: Try my soft and chewy gingerbread cookies
- Decorate a gingerbread house: Check out all my best gingerbread house decorating tips here.
- Decorate oreo balls: Try my gingerbread men oreo balls, candy cane oreo balls and Christmas present oreo balls.
- Get creative: Try getting creative with different recipes like my easter egg rice krispies, nilla wafer snowman cookies, or these adorable maple acorn cookies.
Pro Tip: Toothpicks come in handy when you need to spread the icing and keep those design details in tact!
How to Store Royal Icing for Sugar Cookies
If you don’t use all of the icing in one day, I recommend storing the leftover royal icing in these squeeze bottles. Not only are they great for decorating because you can cut the tips to different sizes, but they come with caps which makes storing the icing so much easier. When storing, cover the tops of the squeeze bottles with a wet paper towel to prevent them from drying out.
This icing can be made 2-3 days in advance and stored in the refrigerator, as long as it’s in an airtight container. When ready to use, bring it to room temperature and gently mix it up if needed. If you need to adjust the consistency of the icing at this point, add a few drops of water slowly until you reach the desired consistency.
Can you freeze Royal Icing?
Yes, this easy cookie icing can be frozen! You can place leftover icing in a freezer safe bag or airtight container and freeze it for up to 2 months. If you have colored your icing with different colors, each color should be stored separately in its own bag or container.
When you’re ready to use the icing, thaw it overnight in the refrigerator and then bring it to room temperature.
You can also freeze cookies that are decorated with royal icing. To freeze baked and decorated cookies:
- Stack like shapes together (for example stack the candy canes together or stack the gingerbread men together) and place a small piece of parchment paper between each cookie. I like to stack mine about 4-5 cookies high.
- Wrap the stacks well in plastic wrap.
- Place the bundles inside a ziplock freezer bag or inside a freezer container.
- To thaw, remove the cookies from the bag (keep them inside their plastic wrap) and thaw on the counter. If you store the cookies inside a container, you can simply place the whole container on the counter to thaw.
Royal Icing without Meringue Powder FAQs
It takes about 6-8 hours for royal icing to fully dry to the point where you can stack cookies.
You can easily customize this royal icing to the consistency you need—outline, flood, or piping. The recipe starts on the thicker side, similar to outline icing, so simply add a few drops of water to thin it or a bit of powdered sugar to make it thicker.
The best way to thicken royal icing is to add more powdered sugar. I recommend adding it gradually until you get the thick royal icing you want, while not making the royal icing taste too sweet.
While traditional royal icing made with liquid egg whites needs to be refrigerated, this recipe does not. Using this recipe, you can store your iced cookies at room temperature.
More Frosting Recipes
This is much easier to make than royal icing and was very easy for my 4 year old to decorate with! Will definitely be making this again!
-Heather
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Best Royal Icing Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups (227g) powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp milk or warm water
- 1 Tbsp corn syrup
- ½ tsp vanilla or almond extract
- Gel food coloring
- Squeeze bottles
Instructions
- In a medium to small sized mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients (minus the gel food coloring) and mix with a spatula or mixer until smooth.2 cups (227g) powdered sugar, 2 Tbsp milk or warm water, 1 Tbsp corn syrup, ½ tsp vanilla or almond extract
- Add more milk or water, 1 tsp at a time, if the frosting is too thick. You can pick your desired consistency and manipulate it by adding more water or more powdered sugar. Ideally, when you lift the spoon or mixing utensil up, you want the royal icing that falls into the bowl to disappear within 5-10 seconds.
- Divide into bowls and add gel food coloring. Transfer to piping bags or squeeze bottles (https://amzn.to/3SvF85D) to easily decorate the cookies.Gel food coloring
- I really like these squeeze bottles because you can cut the tips to varying widths and they come with caps. However, if you don’t have caps, cover the tops of the squeeze bottles with a wet paper towel to prevent them from drying out if storing overnight.Squeeze bottles
This is much easier to make than royal icing and was very easy for my 4 year old to decorate with! A little tricky to get to the perfect consistency but very easy and very tasty. Will definitely be making this again!
Can I use food colouring instead of gel? Thanks so much
This sounds great. Do you think agave syrup or another syrup can be substituted for the corn syrup? Also is gel food coloring different from normal food coloring. I typically use natural food coloring( made with vegetables, but looks like the bottles people use when dyeing easter eggs)in recipes. I hope my explanation makes sense. My children have an allergy to dyes. We try to keep everything organic for them.
I personally haven’t tried this, but it sounds like you can substitute honey for the corn syrup. However, the frosting will be softer and won’t set.
Just pure deliciousness! And fun for kids! ❤️
Simple, so tasty and perfect to work with … love it! Thank you Beth for making baking something we can all do ✨💕✨
I used your recipe for icing on my gingerbread (actually your recipe) last week. The gingerbread recipe is fantastic. As for the icing I made two separate one’s, one with vanilla extract and one with almond extract. I highly recommend only using vanilla extract. Maybe it’s just me but the icing with the almond extract had a weird taste. Love your recipes, muffin cookbook and webpage.
How do you get it in the squeeze bottles. My consistency was obviously wrong but I had a horrible time getting it into bottles or even the bags. It seemed too then to make shapes but it wouldn’t even go through the funnel. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Pam! The consistency is determined by how much liquid you add in, it sounds like yours was too thick. I usually pour my icing into the squeeze bottles from a bowl.
I use a tip less piping bag, works great
This was the best, easiest and most FUN icing! Thank you for making my mommying life easier while getting to make memories with my kiddos!
Can you use liquid food colouring for this?
Yes, however, the color might not be as bright.