There is a sweet family that I am friends with and they are expecting their first baby girl! They already have two boys that are a little older, but they are so excited because this is a GIRL! Everyone is excited for them, too. The baby shower was set up by some of her friends and they asked me to make cake -or something- and said she had lots of owl items for the baby and orange and pink. They did a very dangerous thing and told me to just make something, anything I wanted. I have been really wanting to make my own sprinkles using royal frosting, so I decided to make my very own little royal icing owls and then use the leftover icing to pipe long lines i later broke into sprinkles. Here is a picture of step-by-step owls, I’ll give the recipe below…
I just free-handed all of them so some of them were a little oddly shaped, i made well over the amount i needed though so I could pick and choose the best looking ones. I just piped the brown bodies, by the time i was done piping about 60 of them i then filled a plastic zip bag with a very small section of corner cut off with white and started on the eyes. This icing spreads a little bit on its own so i did swirls for the eyes and they spread into nice big and round owl eyes. Then I added some dark brown for the pupil, bright yellow for the beak directly between the eyes and you are done! The whole process took about 30 minutes (plus about 7 to make the icing). The worst part is waiting for them to dry, I let mine dry about 15 hours and some of them were slightly tacky in the middle when i picked them up.
You can use royal icing to make just about anything you could imagine. Seriously. There are some incredible people who do royal icing flowers (check them out Here). I cannot wait to try my hand at something a bit more like that! They dry smooth and hard and you can store them in an air-tight container for a very long time! You can add flavors to make them taste however you want and they taste so much better than those store bought sugar stick on decorations…. yuck. Also, check out some gorgeous cookies decorated with royal icing here and here.
Stiff Royal Icing (with egg whites)
2 Egg whites
3-4 Cups Powdered Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (found in your grocery store near the spices)
Place egg whites in a large bowl and beat until smooth and slightly frothy. Add in powdered sugar (start with 3 cups and add more to desired thickness. I wanted mine to be quite thick and not to run so I used 4 cups total), vanilla extract and cream of tartar. Beat for several minutes (about 5) until icing forms soft peaks. Add in desired colors.
*Only use gel food colorings or else your icing will be too thin and will not hold shape!
When not using place a slightly damp cloth or paper towel over the top of your bowl to prevent the top layer from hardening.
Sweets by Bailey 