Which One is Better— Buttercream Frosting or Royal Icing

A cake is not just a food but also a matter of tastefulness and beauty. The taste of a cake is as important as its decoration. Both buttercream frosting and royal icing have their unique advantages and disadvantages as far as cake decoration is concerned. Some prefer the moldable, soft nature of royal icing while some adore the nice taste and the beautiful texture of buttercream, but it’s sometimes troublesome when it comes to carrying the cake.

Here’s a brief comparative review of buttercream frosting and royal icing to help you choose between the two to decorate your tasty cake with.

Royal Icing

The chief ingredients of royal icing are egg whites and confectioners’ sugar. It remains soft at first but gets hard s it sets.

Advantages:

As it takes some time to dry and set, it gives you a lot of time for decoration in advance. You can make things like homemade sprinkles or piped flowers in advance and use whenever at your convenience.

As it gets firm when it dries, it’s perfect for decorating cookies. It gives your cake a good and trim look and makes it easy to carry.

Disadvantages:

There is a possibility that royal icing should crack. So it may not be a good option if you want to cover large or curved areas.

The taste is sweet but not always exquisite or extraordinary. It may be bland sometimes. It’s more suitable as a garnish rather than something that adds good flavour.

You wouldn’t want to fill your cake with it as it gets dry and hard, unless you want to make your cake crunchy with it.

Buttercream

Butter cream is mainly a mixture of butter and confectioner’s sugar whipped together to make a soft and creamy consistency. It may include egg whites, such as found in Swiss meringue buttercream. There are numerous ways to flavour it, it can function both as topping and filling.

Advantages:

It’s soft and easy to load and carry. It’s good for making designs writing names.

As it contains much fat, it has a rich flavour.

It’s easy to make. If too much sugar has made it stiff, just use some milk to thin it down or use cream or even water. If it gets too thin, just add some sugar. It’s taste and texture suits a wide variety of flavours. That’s why it’s good both as topping and filling and the taste remains excellent in both cases.

Disadvantages:

As the texture is soft, heat and humidity can be harmful for buttercream. You can make a crusting buttercream to make it tighter, but it may still be too delicate, which may make it difficult for transport.

Even if you take good care while making the cake and smooth and spread the buttercream, it’s never as smooth and flat as royal icing.

Because of the soft texture, it’s not a good option when it comes to sculpting. The design breaks easily.

So, you can read the information given above and decide what you’re going to use to make your delicious cake or cookies.