ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Royal icing

Royal icing is a special type of icing that you can use to decorate cookies, cakes, and cupcakes. Imagine you're playing with Play-Doh and you want to put some decorations on a cookie. Royal icing is like the Play-Doh for decorating cookies and cakes!

To make royal icing, you first start with powdered sugar and water. Then you add egg whites or meringue powder, which is like magic powder that helps the icing get really thick and harden when it dries. You beat all of these things together until it's fluffy and creamy.

Once you have your royal icing made, you can put it into a piping bag, which is like a plastic bag with a squirty end on it. You squeeze the icing out of the bag and use it to make designs on your cookies or cakes. You can make dots, lines, swirls, letters, and even shapes like flowers or animals!

One cool thing about royal icing is that it dries really hard, so you can stack cookies on top of each other without smudging the designs. You can also add color to your icing by mixing in food coloring, so you can make your decorations any color you want!

Just remember, royal icing is great for decorating, but it's not for eating by itself. It's really sweet and hard, so it's best to use it only as decoration on your sweet treats.
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