I made some royal icing letters for the first time and they seem to be dry. I am going to put them on a buttercream iced cake. This cake is for a party tomorrow afternoon. I want to go ahead and put them on but am afraid the red royal icing letters will either bleed or breakdown from the grease in the buttercream. I want to try to get this done tonight so "IF" my letters along with my spares break I still have time to do some more tonight so they can dry overnight.

THANKS!!

The grease can break down the royal icing. I would wait till tomorrow

Hi - I have heard both sides of it. However from personal experience, I have added royal icings things on a cake and they have been fine. (I use IMBC). Even after 2 days they have held up. Another way I have heard is to cut the parchment the letters are on, and use the whole thing - that way the wax paper is touching the buttercream andnot the royal. But like i said, I have used royal leters straight on BC and had no problems.

My first cake with royal icing flowers was my mother's day cake for my MIL. Not one of my best works I must say!! The daisies that I put on the cake were white and the BC on the cake was green. After an hour or so of the flowers being on the cake, the green BC seeped into the daisies. I guess if I had used white BC to mount the flowers it wouldn't have been a problem. If you cannot wait, I would at least try the wax paper under your letters (cut to the shape of the letter of course). Or maybe even use the same color royal icing that you used for the letters as your mounting icing just to give a barrier between the letters and the BC.

As far as breaking down is concerned, I think you're safe. And with dark letters and white BC, you're probably OK, too, but not the other way around.

Never had any problems when I use royal icing flowers on the b/c icing.

Thanks for all your replies! I did decide to wait until today to put the letters on. I did put one on the cake last night where I knew I could cover it with a border just in case. It was still hard this morning and didn't bleed into the white so I think it would have been okay last night but you never know. Only one broke and since I read other posts on royal icing letters I made two of everything so I had a spare. I took the cake to the party at 4:30 and everything was still okay.