Royal Icing Experiment- Lessons Learned

Instagram is really a cool platform. I'm constantly finding so many talented people. Recently I keep stumbling upon cookie decorators. These ladies are amazing! The cookies they create are almost too pretty to eat. One of my favorite accounts is @tinykitchentreats! I found this lovely profile and found out that she makes these extra special sprinkles...so of course I had to get some to use on my cookies!

"Slumber Party sprinkles"  - There are mini donut sprinkles in this pack!

For the cookies I used the same recipe I used in "Tea Party cookies". I've reading a lot about royal icing and comparing these decorating videos to my experiences with royal icing...something wasn't right. Apparently there are two schools of thought: meringue powder and egg whites. 

Many use meringue powder just to be safe and others say egg whites taste better and if using pasteurized eggs there shouldn't be any concerns about getting sick . ** This excluded pregnant women and people with weak immune systems**

This time I decided to try egg whites. Literally royal icing is powdered sugar and either egg white or meringue powder, some recipes call for a little bit of water as well. I was trying to achieve the "flooding" consistency which is supposed to dry almost immediately. Check out how the cookies turned out. Note: Regardless of appearance, the were delicious :) 

They're a bit sloppy. I would like to be able to outline them and then fill in the rest of the cookie. I learned that I need to make the consistency a bit more stiff AND most importantly get a different icing bag. My icing bag tip cam off and spilled icing on one of my cookies and it doesn't have enough variety for tip size. 

Other lessons: Donut shaped cookie cutters are the best and slumber party sprinkles make them look more appetizing than regular donuts!