royal icing cement
1 1kg pack of icing sugar
egg whites or meringue powder
food colouring
ziplock bags.
pegs, bulldog clips or similar
Damp clean cloths, such as teatowels.
its just a strong royal icing mix, like you would use for a gingerbread house.
if you don't mind raw egg, then start with 2 beaten egg whites (beat them up nice and fluffy) and beat in icing sugar until thick enough to hold a bead . (in other words, if you drip it off a spoon, it forms a cord which holds its shape.
I used a 1 kg pack of icing sugar. Add it slowly, but don't worry if its too dry you can thin it down again with water.
If you don't like the idea of raw egg white use meringue powder such as pavlova magic. I tthink the proportion of powder to water is 4 tsp powder to 4 tablespoons of water. dissolve the meringue powder in the water first, whip it up all fluffy like an egg white, then beat in the icing sugar. and don't use hot water or it will go into lumps.
to be honest, I don't measure, Any amount of eggwhite or meringue powder is fine for decorating biscuits. However, the more egg protein you add, the harder your icing will be, and the more fluffy it will be when youre piping, which is a cheats way of increasing the volume. Really hard icng is good for gingerbread house cement, because it sets hard and fast, very useful when youre making houses the way I do
(in a hurry, on the last saturday night before christmas, with a few girlfriends and plenty of laughs and champagne) Also good fo biscuits that have to survive a trip through Australia Post.
OK so beat up a good big batch of icing,
divide into 3 batches in 3 cool, damp bowls. Make one batch bigger than the other 2. Cover the bowls with a damp cloth so they don't start setting.
colour a small batch red
colour a small batch blue
colour the bigger batch yellow. don't be shy with colour, kids love it revoltingly bright.
use a spatula to get the icing into ziplock bags. fold the closure strip right out of the way while you are doing it so you don't gum it up with icing. if you are by yourself, try standing the bag, lip folded out, in a wide coffee cup.
snip a tiny corner off the bags and pipe red stripe on the smallest curve of your rainbows. seal the bag with a clip.
leave a gap for the orange stripe
pipe a bead of yellow parallel to the red but as i said, leavng a gap for the orange. seal your piping hole with a clip.
leave another gap for the green
pipe a bead of blue on the outermost curve.
go back to your yellow, take half out and put it into another bag. take a scoop of the blue icing and mix with the yellow to make green.
Open your original yellow and add a scoop of your red to make orange.
pipe orange between the yellow and red.
pipe green between the yellow and blue.
All done!
here is the order of colour
RED
ORANGE
YELLOW
GREEN
BLUE
Don't bother tying to make purple out of red and blue, you just get a peculiar grey.
