Well, after all this time, I have decided to come back to the blog with a new purpose. I think I am turning this into a craft project blog, perhaps with the occasional infusion of the zombie project I'm working on. Sound like fun? Good! I think so too. So without further ado, my latest success:
Ta da!
Those, my friends, are royal icing dog bones! No, I'm not crazy. Let me explain.
I have a puppy, whose name is Casey. Casey has had a very rough first year of life - four homes before he found me, a pretty serious infection, lots of shots and vet visits and unhappy weeks for the puppy. He is the sweetest dog and ridiculously well behaved for the amount of time I've spent training him. And he's turning one this week! That's right - soon, he will be a man! So I'm throwing him a party, because I never turn down an excuse for a party!
So now - how do you do this? Well, I didn't think this through, so I don't have a good picture tutorial, but I will make one at some point. It might be a minute, since it's going to take awhile to use these up! But that doesn't mean I can't explain.
This is a closer shot of a few of the bones:
Sorry it's a little blurry! I took it with a phone. Like I said, better versions will appear in the future.
I tried many methods to make these and finally settled on the one that got me those. I used the royal icing recipe on the side of the meringue powder and added the extra 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to make it pretty stiff. (Heads up, that recipe makes a crazy amount of these! I only used about half of it and I have 3 full cookie sheets of bones drying on my dining room table.)
I used the #1 tip (a little circle) and a medium-sized pastry bag. I always put the pastry bag in a pint glass and roll the sides over it, to make filling easy. Remember not to overfill the bag! (I totally forgot this and had icing all over my right hand by the time I was done.) Twist the end of the bag, push the icing down, push a little out to get the air gone, and you're ready to go!
Essentially, you make this shape with royal icing:
:--:
Here's how:
First, make the two dots on each end, touching each other so the icing meets in the middle.
To Make Dots: hold the tip a tiny bit above the board (between 1/8-1/16 of inch worked for me). Gently squeeze the bag without moving the tip and the icing will pool into a little dot. When it's the size you want, stop squeezing and lift the bag away.
Then, place the tip where the dots meet on one end and slowly (while squeezing gently) make a wide line until your tip is touching the other two dots. Stop squeezing and lift up the bag.
Amazingly, that's it! I tried for a bit to not have the little peaks on the dots, but decided in the end that I kinda liked them. I suspect if my icing had been a little less stiff, I would not have seen them as much.
I also made these in a bunch of sizes, ranging from itty bitty mini dog bones that look more like they should be sprinkles to 2 inch long ones that I'll put on top of cupcakes.
Hope they entertain you as much as they do me!
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