Royal Icing...

Frosting....

hm mm, never thought so many traditional Indian skills would come to fore.
Something that the world is crazy for.
Something that we take for granted.
Henna Tattoos.
Simply put...Mehendi...more eloquently  Henna.
With which we adorn our hands and feet at every festive occasion.Or just Ainvi....for no reason.

Same technique,same principles...only this time we do it with sugar and EAT it!
Make pretty stuff like candy canes and stockings and snowflakes and whatever takes our fancy...or in my case wherever the squiggly frosting landed...it was yay!
My friend Ritu Sharma is really good at the frosting stuff,her cookies were neater,but then with three colours they ended up looking gorgeous.
For the
Royal Icing...

All you need is


3 egg whites at room temperature
4 cups plus a few tsp extra sifted icing sugar
few drops of lemon Juice
food colouring optional
And a  beater....if you don't have one ,become an angrier version of our very own Amit Ji(The quintessential angry young man Amitabh Bachchan)

Start with the egg whites in a bowl.Truth be told,I deleted the pictures of the frosting I made last week,so I made a tiny portion of the frosting today for this blog post .Such is my love.I ♥ my readers.

Basically beat the egg white and the sugar,the colour will be a dirty yellowish pale colour you may not want to use for frosting.

But then,there's some magic.A few drops of lemon juice....and yellow becomes white.Pearly white.That's why you always buy Surf Excel! Lalita ji!!
just a few drops,don't over do the lemon,or the frosting will be runny.

Beat it to incorporate enough air,the frosting will begin to thicken and look pipe-able. Test with a ribbon-as in just lift the beater blade and let it form a ribbon...if the ribbon stays about 5 seconds....you need to beat more.My Fabulous Cakes And Bakes said 8 seconds...since I tried this for the first time...I didn't want it to come back and bite my butt...or to have to eat humble pie...no, I was more interested to let the cookies get bitten.

So I beat the frosting till the ribbon stayed 8 seconds.As this was the batch for the blog...it was tiny and now it  rests frozen. Ready to use when the next moment arises.

OK,I used disposable frosting bags,If you don't have any ,make small cones with plastic sheets or with butter paper-just like the cones for mehendi or henna.
I divided the frosting into 3 parts...rather filled the first cone with white ,and the remaining I tinted -you guessed it PINK.
so the second cone was pink...and to the remaining we added blue to make purple..didn't want to add yellow to pink....
That was mission "pipe".

After you frost the cookies...let them be.And cover any royal Icing you don't use,as it hardens on exposure to air.
The frosted cookies need to be left to their own devices...alone -untouched...you can decorate them with tiny sprinkles or silver balls.We had 1 bottle of silver balls that I wanted to use on the cake and cupcakes...so this being Ranchi we Pearl-"ised" the frosting.White looks awesomely Pearly.

This was the lot of cookies after 3 days...the cookies were made by the local bakery ,I did ask for the recipe ,but you know that they will never give you the right one...so I did not even bother.

All I do know is that we had a great time doing up those cookies,You can try too..with almost minimum effort let out the creative genius...maybe pipe some paisleys,some mangoes ..whatever ,don't tint your frosting PINK.
Don't get me wrong ,I totally ♥ Pink...but I'm up to my gills with this colour.

Try it out and tell me about the fun you had when you realised you wanted to frost all in sight...
Soumya Shenoy and Jiya Gupta Sawhney.....while you are frosting the cookies...try some on the unsuspecting hubbies....
Have fun...

So What are you baking today???