Sugar icing is a wonderful thing… it allows you to do so many things and gives free rein to your imagination.
This type of icing is good for decorating cakes and biscuits (such as gingerbread, biscuit houses, writing on cakes and even for creating actual silhouettes and dolls, Easter egg decorations), but it is different from the icing used to cover desserts, such as Sacher Torte and cakes covered in sugar paste.
In this article we present 2 different ways to make it: the first method involves a glaze cooked in a bain-marie, the second involves an uncooked glaze.

1 – Cooked icing – Ingredients:

• 150 g of powdered sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 tablespoon of lemon or orange juice

Put the sugar, egg white and lemon in a saucepan and mix briefly with a wooden spoon. Prepare a small pot of boiling water and place the saucepan in a bain-marie. Using an electric whisk, beat the mixture at low speed. As it heats up, you will feel the mixture changing consistency (becoming more solid and shiny white). Test the consistency every now and then until it is thick enough to the touch.

Remove from the heat and place in the piping bag for decorations. If desired, you can add a few drops of food coloring to obtain colored icing.

2 – Uncooked icing – Ingredients:

• 125-180 gr of icing sugar
• half an egg white or alternatively a little water

Put 125 gr of icing sugar in a bowl and add the egg whites (or water) little by little, mixing well until you obtain a fluid/consistent but not runny consistency, if necessary add the rest of the icing sugar little by little. Put in a piping bag with a narrow-tipped nozzle and you are ready to decorate.

Here is a video with an example of decorating with icing for gingerbread cookies… but you can have fun as you like. Make way for the icing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFYFe3uxtIc