Royal Icing (with meringue powder)

This is the traditional icing for glazing cookies, piping decorations, or assembling the walls of a gingerbread house. It's light and fluffy; the more you beat it, the stiffer it becomes. For a thinner version, simply thin with a bit of water until you have a consistency that will flow evenly over the cookie. Let it dry to a hard, shiny surface, then you can pipe over it or use food-safe markers to decorate. To color the frosting, we recommend gel paste or powdered colors; liquid food coloring can dilute the frosting so much it separates and becomes grainy. Be sure to store any frosting you're not using in a tightly covered container; it becomes quite hard as it dries. Make this big batch of frosting, then divide it into smaller amounts to tint different colors.

1/4 cup meringue powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 to 4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

3/4 cup cool water

Place the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add the cool water, and stir slowly to allow the sugar to dissolve.  Mix on low speed at first, increasing to high speed over several minutes. Beat until the icing is fluffy.  Keep the frosting covered with a damp towel and some plastic wrap until you have time to use it.

Divide the frosting into smaller containers and mix with food coloring for several colors.

To use for piping, put a tip in the bottom of a disposable pastry bag. Using a coupler will allow you to change tips with ease.  Use a tall, heavy-bottomed glass to hold the pastry bag while you add the frosting. Take care not to fill the bag more than half full.  Close the back of the pastry bag with a twist tie or spring clip, to keep the icing from backing up over your hand when you squeeze it.

Makes 3 cups icing.

From King Arthur Flour

Tips from King Arthur Flour bakers:

To make a hard cookie glaze, thin some of the frosting with a little more water. Dip the top of a cooled cookie into the frosting, then sweep across the top with a spatula to remove the excess. At this point you can sprinkle the wet glaze with colored sugar and let it dry, or put another color on top and swirl it through with a toothpick.

To keep the frosting in a pastry bag from hardening at the tip, place the pastry bag inside a second, uncut bag. This will shield the open tip from the air, and keep the frosting from leaking out.

When decorating, here are some of the tools you may find handy to have on hand: craft paintbrushes for spreading frosting; toothpicks for drawing one color through another; tweezers for placing sugar decorations, and colored sugars for sprinkling over wet icing.