How Do You Make Icing with Powdered Sugar, Milk & Co.?

How to make icing is not only interesting in Christmas baking – the sweet and decorative icing enhances baked goods at any time of the year and on occasion. The easiest way to answer the question is how to make white icing: all you need is 250 g of powdered sugar and 4 tablespoons of water. You can use 4 tablespoons of lemon juice instead, which adds extra flavor to recipes like our icing donuts or lemon cake. If the icing is to be really snow-white, milk is used as the liquid. Depending on how thick you want the delicious glaze to be, you can vary the proportions. For thin frosting, simply use 125g powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons liquid, for thick layers 3 tablespoons to 250g sugar.

How to make colorful icing and variants without powdered sugar?

Pastries such as mini donuts, in particular, can be made colorful with different icing colors – ideal for children’s birthday parties, for example. For the colorful glazes, simply stir food coloring into the finished icing mass. It is best to approach this with caution. If the icing has become a bit too runny, you can add more powdered sugar. If you prefer natural coloring, you can also use fruit juice as the liquid for the icing. Cherry juice turns red, blueberry or elderberry juice purple, and carrot juice yellow-orange. And how do you make icing yourself without powdered sugar? Very simple: with normal sugar. To do this, mix 200 g of granulated sugar with 125 ml of water or milk and heat until the sugar has melted. A little butter gives the glaze a nice shine. It is best to melt the mass in a water bath so that it can be kept liquid during processing. You can also make icing with the sugar substitute erythritol. Mix 100 g of the fine powder with 3 tablespoons of liquid.

Sugar icing processing made easy

If you want to make a gingerbread house yourself, the sweet frosting has to stick well and be really hard. You can do this by beating 250 g of icing sugar with an egg white to a stiff mass. The best way to apply liquid icing variants to cakes and cookies without running is to use a piping bag. Using a small nozzle, apply the glaze only along the edges and let it dry briefly. Then fill in the entire area with a larger nozzle. Solid icing for muffins, biscuits, donuts, etc. can only be made when the baked goods have completely cooled down. For particularly moist cakes, you can also apply the mass when it is still warm. This is how the icing soaks into the baked goods – delicious with lemon cake!