Royal Icing…with “regular” sugar

Have you ever wanted to decorate cookies but didn’t have any confectioners sugar or Meringue Powder for Royal Icing?  I don’t know about you, but these ingredients are usually not staples in my house.  I needed an icing, like royal icing, that would dry hard so they could be stacked and wrapped!  I thought, how bad could it be if I used regular granulated sugar and just egg whites?!!  I always have those things:)!   I used 3 egg whites or about 3 1/2 ounces!

If you have problems separating egg yolks and egg whites try this…

I was a little afraid of the raw egg whites in my icing, so I decided to quickly pasteurize the egg whites.    If you have a thermometer you want it to reach at least 138 degrees Fahrenheit.  If not, just add the sugar to the egg whites and wisk it over the double broiler until the sugar has melted and you are good to go:)!!  So lets make a double broiler! To do this, you will need a pot of simmering water and a your bowl!  I used my kitchen aide mixing bowl.

Wow!! I need new pots;)!! Then put the sugar in with the egg whites!  I used double the amount of egg whites… or just under a cup of sugar if you don’t have a scale.

Pour the sugar into your Egg whites…

Set the bowl over the pot of simmering water and whisk away…

Whisk until you can no longer feel any sugar between your fingers, it doesn’t take long… about 3-5 minutes?!

Then put the bowl back under the mixer and mix on medium high until it the bowl is cool underneath, about 5-7 minutes.

Then add in some flavor, this is just intimation vanilla! Is it weird I like that more then the real thing;)?! I used 1.5 tablespoons… You can use whatever flavoring you like:)!

Then just keep whipping till you like the consistency of the icing!  The longer you whip it, the firmer it will be!  I like it when it looks like this…

But you could go a little longer if you want it even stiffer!

I colored mine with icing color, a couple shades of blue and made these yummy cookies with my easy icing!

They dried hard and I could wrap and stack them without them getting messed up, even without using powdered sugar! Yay!!