Swirls Cup~cakes: This is an interesting leg of the journey! I'll get it right...Eventually!

This is my first attempt at lace and embroidery work with Royal Icing.

These are Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies minus the icing. I had to laugh at myself when I realized I photographed the only 3 cookies in the bunch that had wrinkles. The other 12 cut-outs baked just right. I had set these aside for us to nibble on and use the others to practice Royal Icing techniques. I must say, the way they look has no bearing on the taste whatsoever!

Not bad. It did take a bit of playing around with the icing to get it to the right consistency for damming the border for the flow icing.

As you can tell by the photo, my flow icing took a bit of trial and error before getting it to a satisfactory consistency. The photo at the top was the 1st go at it. The butterfly on the right was the 2nd and the one on the left made my morning~

This was the fun part!! HaHa! Straight lines are easier to pipe when your Royal Icing is the right consistency. Have you noticed how much I've used the word 'consistency'? I have a feeling I'll be dreaming about it :o)...This by the way, was not the right consistency~

The (partial) butterfly at the top of the photo was a disaster to say the least. The piping icing was much too thin and ran together. But aside from that, I vow to practice, practice, practice!

The second attempt left me much calmer and enthusiastic about continuing my persuit of lace work on cookies!

The cookie on the bottom left is a technique called 'Embroidery'. It's really a very pretty way to use Royal Icing, but I think a darker background will show it off more. As you can see, I still have cookies that I flooded but haven't decorated yet.

I attempted to use a #1 tip for the piping, but until I find a really great Royal Icing recipe that doesn't clog the tip of this tiny hole, I'll be forced to use disposable piping bags that I can just snip the end off. I much prefer the tip to cutting the bag, but just couldn't get my icing the right CONSISTENCY! lol I sifted my sugar three times and still had issues. I thinned the icing with corn syrup and even tried a few drops of water instead of syrup in a batch. I'll just keep working at this till I get it right! I'm open to ANY suggestions!