How to Use Icing Bags to Decorate Sugar Skulls

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: So I actually ended up mixing up four colors of icing instead of three. I kind of got carried away and wanted a few more colors. You can make as many colors as you want. This pink isn't going to show up too well on the pink skulls, but I can I use it on the white. I was thinking maybe I could use some white at the same time on the pink that might look pretty, but I've just kinda got four colors here. I've mixed them in the bags by just kind of adding the icing and the color to the bag and mixing it by just kind of kneading and squeezing the bag until it's all kind of uniform. And to me, that's a lot kind of more pleasant than having to do the dishes later, and kind of get food coloring and sugar all over yourself. Okay, so these are ready to go. I've kind of gathered the royal icing kind of down to the corner. Now, the reason I'm doing that is because if you see sugar skulls that have been kind of decorated in Mexico, they have really, really fine line kind of work on them, alright? It's not like they just kind of splatter the icing on them or like ice them like a cake. They actually do a very fine line kind of piping of details around the eyes and the around the mouth and on the forehead. And so, for that reason, you really want to gather the icing towards the corner and then, you use like little crab scissors and you just cut the smallest possible little tip off of that that you can. There, now I've done that. So, now when this icing comes out you see it kinda comes out in kind of a nice sort of line like that. And so, now, I can do nice little fine kind of detailed line work. And actually, that line is little a bit thicker than I like. I might even want to cut that hole smaller than that even, right? So, let me try it again. Let me try on the pink. Let me try and cut just a really small little hole there at the tip with the crab scissors just the tiniest of holes and see what kind of a line they get. That's a little bit better, little bit finer line there, okay. And then when those dry, they'll be really, really hard, like I said just rock-hard icing. And so, that's why we say this isn't really the kind of icing you would want to use on a cake, but it's a nice sort of decorative icing. Oh there, I've cut a really small hole for that yellow. So that yellow I will be able to get a nice kind of fine line with. And let me do the blue. I'll try to get teeny tiny hole there, just a smallest little nip. And let's see how I did. Okay, good. There we go. So, I have a really, really fine with the blue. And you see how bright these colors are. It is because I use the paste food colorings. Just once again, if you use the food color you can get at your supermarket, even though some of them might say gel food color, if they are the basic ones that kind of come at the supermarket, you probably won't be able to get colors as bright as these. And actually, this pink that is just like one drop of this paste food coloring for this whole bag of icing. If I have put like three or four drops, I could get a really vivid red icing, and you just can't that with the food coloring at the supermarket. Okay, so I got four colors. I'm going to wash my hand and then I'm going to start decorating these skulls."