Elsa's nose job! New video tutorial on royal icing noses!

    
My oven is sparkly clean, I have more dough to make (and the recipe to tweak which is always fun), but I took time out to add the finishing touches to my latest creation... finally... I bring you The Head of Elsa! Just call me Frankencat.

You might notice that isn't Elsa above (either that or I'm really not very good). It's the first time I've attempted a man's head, and it turned out rather well I think. I tried out a new technique for creating the noses - they've always been problematic. Do you paint them on after? Do you pipe a line? Or a funny shaped little squiggle in icing like I did for my first Anna and Elsa cookies? (If you want to know how I make the eyes, check out my royal icing eye tutorial.)

See the difference?

Well, this time round, I tried piping a blob of stiffish white icing under where the nose was to be, then flooded the face.You need to let the white crust just a little bit, and only ice around it to start with, adding a final blob of flesh coloured icing on top at the last moment. I piped on top too early with Anna, and her nose has ended up less well defined. When smoothing it in to the face, I only used the scribe above the tip and not below, to try and maintain the pointy-outy-ness of the nose. Yes that is a word. Like 'cookier'. I think it'll catch on.

This time I didn't wait for the face to crust before doing the hair. I just made sure the icing for the hair was thick enough not to mingle. Like soft toothpaste consistency. And here's my second tip:  I also used the 'Master' disposable piping bags which lots of people have been trying lately, without a tip. I do love them - no more bag washing, and I've stopped bothering with couplers. I used to change tips all the time, but now I seem to just manage somehow.

For textured piping like the hair I like the fact that it's so easy to vary the thickness and broadness of the lines you pipe. You can see the contrast in the video - I used the same bag, with the same sized snip in it for both the larger bands on the first pass round her head, then the  much narrower lines for added detail on top. And because it's the end of a bag, rather than a metal tip, there's less risk of scraping too hard, when you try to spread the icing flatter. In other words, this method is just very flexible.

Anyway, without further ado, here she is; I don't think she's too monstrous...

Check out how to make Anna and Elsa in my tutorial.
and don't forget my Olaf tutorial here.