“We elves like to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.” Buddy, in Elf (2003).
Generally, my belief when decorating cookies is that the more you mess with them, the worse they taste. While I appreciate the look real royal icing creates, I’ve always shied away from it because of this.
Using lemon juice in confectioner’s sugar, while pretty delicious does have its limitations. Most specifically, I found no matter what I did, the colors bled.
So, this year I decided to go for it with the royal icing figuring that even if they tasted awful, they at least had a chance of looking good.
I did quite a bit of research in preparation and found the royal icing recipe and technique instructions from The Adventures of Sweet Sugar Bell made a lot of sense. Especially the part about the spray bottle.
I’m telling you, the spray bottle was key.
Not to get all metaphysical on ya’ll, but I can’t help but think of T.S. Elliott and his Wasteland (1922) now that all is said and done: