Ingredients for Royal Icing

Series Summary

There are two worlds: the living and the dead. All of us will have to leave this world to transcend to another existence. Wherever this realm of the dead lies, there is no doubt that is separate from the present reality of the living. However, can these two existences ever meet? On November 1st and 2nd, the two separate realities mingle together. An exception to the supernatural rules of this physical world, the Day of the Dead is a holiday celebrated by the living for the dead. Observers of the holiday believe that departed souls come to communicate with the living. However, rather than focusing on the dreary prospect of death, the festival is jovial with laughter and love. Grand stories are told of the departed. Alters are built with the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. Pictures and memorabilia are left to remind the departed of their former life. El Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of the ever flowing circle of life and death, and it reinforces the belief that our greatest accomplishment in this life is to be remembered and loved in the next.

As part of the many customs of El Dia de los Muertos, many people create sugar skulls. These skulls play an important symbolic part of Day of the Dead celebrations. Sugar skulls are made from processed sugar, baked, and then decorated. They can be given as gifts or placed on alters. Sugar skulls are extremely easy to make, and they are a fun craft project for people of all ages.

In this free video series, learn how to decorate sugar skulls for Day of the Dead. Our expert, Amanda Claire, shows you techniques and tricks for making your sugar skull fantastic! Learn how to make royal icing for the skulls. Amanda shows you how to color royal icing. Learn easy tips for tracing the skulls, and learn what other kind of material you can use on sugar skulls. So, So, start this el Dia de los Muertos off right, and learn how to decorate sugar skulls today!

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: Okay, so the type of icing that you use to decorate sugar skulls is a type of icing called royal icing and people who bake cakes and do sort of decorative icing will tell you that royal icing is not a particularly delicious icing. I mean it's basically just sugar and meringue powder. It gets very, very stiff. In fact, once it dries, it's almost like cement. It's really sort of hard and crunchy, and it's not really the kind of icing you want to use on a really nice cake. But it's good for things like decorating gingerbread men and gingerbread houses that are really more for looks than to eat. Yes, you can eat it but, again, it's not really a particularly tasty icing. It's more of just a functional icing that gets really hard, really sticky, really stiff, and is good for decorating. So, again, all the ingredients you need are powdered sugar, also known as confectionary sugar. You need meringue powder again. If you want bright colors, it's recommended that you use the gel or the paste food colors, and you're going to need water. And so the basic formula is for every pound of sugar you want to use about a quarter cup of meringue powder. So, this package is two pounds. If I was to use all this, I'm going to have to use a whole half cup of that meringue powder. But I'm probably only going to do, maybe half of this, make kind of a small batch of icing 'cause I don't have many sugar skulls, and I'm going to want to maybe make three different colors of icing. So, I'm going to mix up, again, mix up the dry ingredients first like we did with the sugar skulls. I'm going to mix half of this with about a quarter cup of meringue powder, mix it up dry, and then we're going to add water slowly until it gets the right consistency."