Marbled Royal Icing

This beautiful icing technique looks difficult, but was easy enough for my Girl Scout Troop when I was nine. I know you can do it too!

The most important thing is to get your frosting the right consistency. Once you have that down, the creative part begins (also known as the part you can't mess up.)

Use any Royal Icing recipe. Here's the one I used:

2 lbs (1 large bag) powdered sugar

3 T meringue powder

7 T cold water

food coloring as desired

You will need:

cookies

a standing or handheld mixer

icing bags or ziplock bags

a butterknife

toothpicks

1) Combine frosting ingredients together and mix for about 5 minutes on medium. At this point, when you lift the beater up, a string of frosting will fall on top of the rest of the icing, remain at the surface momentarily, and then be reabsorbed.

2) Place 2/3 of white frosting in a decorating bag or ziplock.

3) Color remaining icing as desired. As you can see from the pictures below, you need more red food coloring than I had to make red. But pink is pretty too!

4) Prepare your decorating area.

5) Outline each shape with a line of white frosting. Fill it in.

6) Draw thin lines of colored frosting across the cookie.

7) Using a toothpick or something similar, drag lightly perpendicular to the colored frosting lines.

8) Repeat dragging toothpick alternating "up" and "down" strokes. You look like a frosting genius!