Humidity and Royal Icing - Re-cap

Can we talk about the weather?!
A very humid and clammy day on Saturday was followed by a huge thunderstorm in the early hours of Sunday morning. The thunder and lightning - which was striking all around us along the valley, lasted for hours. So on Sunday, we were without electricity for most of the day. Today, humidity is officially sitting at 70%, but it feels more like 90%.
Okay, so this isn't a meteorological blog....but when you are working with royal icing and fondant, you can become a little obsessed with the weather. Especially when it's bad. And humidity = bad weather. Bad. Bad. Bad.

So here's a  re-cap on 2 posts I wrote early in Spring on the subject

www.teacakeandcreate.blogspot.com/2012/08/humidity-and-royal-icing.html

www.teacakeandcreate.blogspot.com/2012/10/cloudy-with-rain.html

What I've been doing in this kind of weather, is putting my decorated cookies into the oven, with the fan on an a tiny smidgeon of heat, to dry them out completely. Then I package them in sealed cellophane bags, or in an airtight container between layers of paper towel.

 If you leave a decorated biscuit out in high humidity - even if it has already dried completely - this is what happens:

Before

After

... if you could see it close-up, you'd see that the icing has become completely dull and pitted. And, of course, the cookie itself is soft and soggy.

Wishing you good - baking weather days!

xxM