Playing with Royal Icing.

Last weekend, I got my largest order to date. The order involves approximately 100 cake balls and 100 rosettes. After a rough start, we finally got the cake ball bases finished last night.

I had started to do this post last night, but my computer froze and I lost the whole thing! Ugh. So now, let me start over and do a quick blurb before I'm cake bound for the rest of the weekend. I have two weddings and a funeral to go to! Sigh.

So I am going to make 100 rosettes for the wedding reception on Saturday. Lots of times they are just dusted with powdered sugar. Other times, they are dipped in royal icing and look colorful and beautiful.

Royal icing is that hard, shining icing that you see on those over-priced boutique cookies. It's basically a simple mixture of egg whites, sugar, water and food coloring. I wanted to experiment making it before trying it on a customer's order, so I mixed up a batch of yellow last night and made some very ugly cookies, doused in the sugary stuff.

Welcome to Sugar Mountain, where is snows powdered sugar year round!

The icing actually turned out pretty well, and hardened up and turned shiny like a dream. The flavor of the stuff right out of the pot, in my opinion, is not too great. However, once paired with the plain sugar cookie, it really enhanced the flavor of the cookie itself.

Some very ugly cookies, some already eaten.

Anyway, I am about to start another series. I recently watched a documentary about nutrition and I am going to give some of the techniques they talked about in the show a whirl. More later, I have to start those 100 cake balls. Stay tuned!