How many cookies can you stencil with royal icing in a row before having to clean the stencil?

Thirteen. Or three. Seven? It could be anywhere in between, honestly. It really depends on how quickly you can move while you’re stenciling!

What makes us have to rinse the stencil off in between cookies in the first place? Two things:

1. Not being able to see your cookie underneath the dirty stencil to get perfect placement.

2. Crusty, drying royal icing starting to scrape into your fresh royal icing.

To that end, let’s get set up for success and do what we can to make the process streamlined.

Watch the full video here, or scroll down to read the rest of the blog:

Assuming you are using the same cookie shape over and over, the first step will be to use painter’s tape or marker to outline your Stencil Genie on your mat, parchment, Counter Cover, etc. This will create a frame in which you’ll place your Stencil Genie every time you lift and replace it.

Place your first cookie in this location, and put the Stencil Genie into place in the marked-out square. Use royal icing to stencil your design as desired, then remove the Stencil Genie and the completed cookie. Place a new cookie in the edible marker outline, and then replace the Stencil Genie within the frame. Stencil the design, and switch to the next cookie. Rinse and repeat—wait, no rinsing needed!

By making it so that we know exactly where to place the cookie and the Stencil Genie every time, it doesn’t matter if you can’t perfectly see that your stencil is centered—it is! And the more quickly you are able to move, the less the royal icing on your stencil will be able to crust over and start to become a problem. When you start to notice you aren’t getting a smooth scrape anymore, that’s when it’s time to rinse and dry your stencil so that you can continue. We were able to stencil a dozen cookies without batting an eye, and we definitely could have kept going!  

One note: once you remove the stencil from the Stencil Genie, you are affecting the placement of your cookies, so make sure that the edible marker lines are still in the correct location once you put the freshly-cleaned stencil back in place. Make any adjustments as needed before getting started again. Once you eliminate time-wasters like situating your Stencil Genie into the correct place, your stenciling operation will run like a well-oiled machine, saving you time and money!

Other products used in this video:

• Mermaid Stencil
• Oval Plaque Cookie Cutter
• Stencil Scraper
• Instant Black Icing
• Small Spatula 

Looking for information about making or packaging PYO cookies? Click here.