Fantastic Find: Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix Review

A royal icing mix that claims to make shiny gold icing that you can PIPE straight out of the bag and not need to paint to get that ultra-shiny gold look? Is it the real deal or too good to be true?

(Spoiler alert - IT'S LEGIT!!! The Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix is a total cookie decorating game changer.)

Oh you guys. Tell me if you've heard this story before. 

Your client wants gold details on their cookies. The perfectest, shiniest, precisest gold details that every existed. So you make those gorgeous cookies. You ever-so-carefully and masterfully pipe those details with an icing that is as close to gold colored as you can get. And then you  mix your shiny gold luster dust of choice to **just** the right consistency (hopefully!!) and then painstakingly paint every. single. tiny. detail. for hours on end with an absolutely tiny brush...hoping to only get that gold luster dust exactly where you want it. Only to end up with cookies that feel like they were finished by Jackson Pollock. 

For YEARS, cookie decorators have experimented with adding luster dust to royal icing...hoping for a shiny gold icing that they could pipe....only to find that while shiny gold luster dust adds a gold-ish color to the icing...it loses ALL of it's shine and metallic properties. 

Cue sadness and crying and even more late night hours painting tiny gold details.

And then Evil Cake Genius came on the scene with a magical sounding royal icing mix that will fulfill all of our gold royal icing dreams. 

Hopefully. 

I'm not going to lie...when I first heard about this mix...it sounded too good to be true. So I didn't even buy it. 

But I kept thinking about it.

And wanting it to be true.

So I did the only thing I could do -- I purchased some in the name of science. And tested it out. And filmed the whole process as proof. 

Want to know what I think?

WHAT IS Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix? 

It is an FDA approved, edible ready-to-make royal icing mix for the shiniest gold icing  you've ever piped. All you have to do is add water and mix to your preferred consistency. The icing is a super shiny gold color - no need to come back and paint it to be shiny.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix:

It changes everything. Being able to pipe gold icing and not have to paint it to be shiny later will save HOURS of my life. And years of stress eating too, if I'm being honest.

It's ACTUALLY shiny. It's a little more yellow-gold than brown-gold. I lean more towards brown-gold coloring, but it's not so yellow-gold that it feels like shiny yellow. It's DEFINITELY a brilliant gold color.

All you need is water! No other ingredients are necessary. You can mix the entire jar of powder all at once if you want and then freeze the leftovers in a tipless piping bag. Just pull it out of the freezer whenever you need more gold icing! 

It actually tastes good! It kind of tastes like marshmallow. There is a light aftertaste...but it's about the same as any cookie I've eaten that has been painted with a gold luster dust. (The silver has slightly more of an aftertaste than the gold does.)

Because the icing is shiny...and not painted to look shiny...there is nothing to rub off when the cookies are packaged!!!

They also sell a silver, copper, and a rose gold icing mix too!!!

CONCERNS I HAVE ABOUT Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix:

 The jar was smaller than I anticipated. The listing clearly states that the jar is 150 grams. Which it is. It just did not occur to me how little 150 grams is. (BUUUUUT... to put it into perspective the tiny jars of gold luster dust I buy are 4 grams. I don't know why I expected the jar to be bigger.)

It's NOT cheap. It's $20 for a 150 gram jar of Gold Icing Mix. You know that saying - Time is Money? That TOTALLY applies here. The entire jar makes about 1 cup (or a full piping bag) of shiny gold icing. Which roughly translates into a ton of gold icing details....that you will never have to paint again. 

Both the gold and silver took longer to dry than regular royal icing did. Large areas of regular royal icing usually dry firm in about 8-10 hours for me and details dry firm in 2-4 hours. It took at least 2-3 times longer for this icing to really dry. I was nervous that it wasn't ever going to dry...but it definitely did. You just need to plan ahead a little more so you have time to let it dry without feeling panicked. 

The only thing that makes this not  quite 100% perfection for me is that large areas of gold icing don't dry as solid as regular royal icing. Let me break that down. I tried piping gold details with a #1.5 tip and a #3 tip. Both of those dried as expected. I also piped a large dot of gold icing-- similar to the center of a flower. After a couple of days of drying, with firm pressure, I was able to smoosh through the large dot of icing. The smaller detail icing was fine and I couldn't push through the smaller piped details with any amount of pressure. (Not that I'm The Hulk here or anything. Just a standard amount of effort was applied.)

At the same time though, I piped the word "love" on parchment and was able to pull it off and move it around without it ever breaking. So it's really durable, even if it does have a soft bite in larger areas.  For what it's worth, I would guess that you would still be able to package and stack cookies even if you used this on larger areas. And you can DEFINITELY still stack and package cookies that have smaller piped details on them!

ALTERNATIVE PRODUCTS TO Evil Cake Genius Gold Icing Mix: 

Do you HAVE to buy this gold icing mix if you want shiny gold icing? Absolutely not. Obviously. We've been doing this for years. You pipe your details, let them dry, and then come back and paint them with luster dust or some other liquid form of shiny gold-ness. TOTALLY an option. The smaller pots of gold duster are about 1/3 the price of this gold icing mix. (Here are my Top Ten FDA Approved SHINY Gold Luster Dusts.)

If you need large areas to be shiny gold... I still recommend using an airbrush or canned gold spray. It would be a lot more economical. 

You can also definitely get away with using an icing that is gold COLORED...but not metallic or shiny. 

All good options.

BOTTOM LINE: At $20 a jar, I would definitely buy this again. Being able to pipe gold details and not have to come back to paint them and just HOPE that I don't make some giant, unfixable error is very nearly priceless. 

As I mentioned above, I filmed the entire process of making the icing and piping so you could all see how it went. The consistency of the icing it makes is a little different than my normal icing. So definitely look for that in the video. 

ALSO...and this is important... I used a slightly different ratio of powder to water than the label calls for. I used 1/4 cup of powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons of water for my icing. (The label calls for 1/4 cup of powder and 1 teaspoon of water.) This makes an icing that you can pipe details, but will still smooth out with a little bit of jostle.

Each jar holds about 1 1/2 cups of powder. When mixed all at once, I added 1/4 cup of water. It was a slightly thinner consistency of icing that the ratios above, but I could still use it for piping. The entire jar makes about 1 cup of mixed icing.

You can grab some of the GOLD ICING MIX HERE!!

They also have a silver, copper, and a rose gold icing mix too!!!