Making Royal Icing Without a Mixer
YES, it IS possible!
Today was a snow day in the GTA and due to the terrible road conditions, I didn’t have to go to work. This meant one thing that I’ve been putting off for the last week – attempting to make royal icing without my beloved mixer (RIP). I’d probably been putting it off due to fear of failing, but honestly it was much easier than I expected.
I pulled out my handy Pampered Chef whisk, setting myself in front of the television with a DVD of Gilmore Girls, rolled up my sleeves and went to town. To mimic the normal speedy action of a mixer, I whisked nonstop……for the required 10 minutes. Yes, I’m probably insane, but it worked and I really wanted to decorate cookies today.
The icing recipe I used is one I modified from Cookie Craft, which was one of the cookbooks I bought with an early birthday present Chapters giftcard (the other was The Pioneer Woman Cooks). I like using meringue instead of egg whites because I’m terrible at remembering that I have egg whites in the fridge that I have to use by a certain time.
Royal Icing
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of icing sugar
- 4 tsp meringue powder (I use Wilton’s, had no problems so far)
- 4 tbsp warm water (Cookie Craft says 3 tbsp, but I find it to be too thick)
Directions:
*This is what I use for piping the outlines of my cookies. I tend to add another 2 – 4 tsp of warm water to the remaining icing for the flooding.
(modified from Cookie Craft)
This was me for most of this morning, decorating cookies. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect snow day.