Royal (Icing) Pain in the A**

This past weekend I decided to decorate cookies for a fun activity. I ordered cookie dough ready made from a bakery I like. They included a packet of merengue powder, a link to an instructional blog post for royal icing, and 8 piping bags. Luckily the baker was there at pickup. I asked her lots of questions which definitely helped me through some of the tougher moments.

My first challenge, aside from my non-existent baking skills, was I didn’t have a go-to person lined up. Though I didn’t realize this until things took a turn in the process filling the first piping bag. Attempting to stuff a thickish, sweetly sick-looking pink goo into the bag I had a hunch something was amiss. But what? No blog post, or instructional video, covered this exact scenario. I needed a human to guide me through. I would also add that getting to this point hadn’t been easy.

First of all, I had no idea about how far in advance I could make the royal icing. It didn’t seem like a last minute task. I was definitely right about that because it took me 1.5 hours to make 3 colors and fill 8 small piping bags. Secondly, I only had a whisk attachment for mixing. Though some instructions covered hand mixing the first part, it seemed only a proper mixer could do the second part. If you have not had the joy of making royal icing, it’s thick and gooey. All my whisker attachment did was spin helplessly around an unmovable mass of dense, clotted sugar spraying tiny chunks of icing everywhere.

I persevered and figured out most of the challenging parts by the third piping bag. Initially, the consistency had been too thick. Not that I had any clue what the ideal consistency should look like. In my mind, this is information you get from a person, i.e., somebody with experience and skills. After some sticky errors, I figured out how to hold the piping bag to load it.

I’m not sure what possessed me to do (mostly) everything from scratch instead of buying ready-made icing. However, throughout the whole frustrating process, the real challenge is how we rely on connecting via disconnected methods. We lose wisdom in the process. I’ve learned all my best cooking tips from being in the kitchen helping and connecting with one another.