Beat meringue powder and water on high for approximately 1-2 minutes, until the mixture, is slightly thickened.
Note: Add the sugar and lemon juice and mix until smooth. (You don’t want the icing to thin, so it will not run when you are creating your designs. Traditionally, Royal Icing is made with Egg Whites. However, I have small children and it is not recommended that children (or pregnant women for you that this applies to) eat uncooked or undercooked eggs. Therefore, I have provided this recipe instead. It worked beautifully and tasted great)
This makes for a good amount of icing. I divided the icing into separate bowls, one for each color I was going to be using and mixed in the gel food coloring of the colors I wanted. I then placed each color into a plastic squeeze bottle to allow for easy tracing of the decoration designs.
So, for these royal icing decorations, I used elongated ovals for the feathers and a simple drawing of a beak and waddle to create a template for the icing decorations. I printed these on a small square of card stock, slightly larger than my cookies. I taped a rectangular piece of cardboard to create a “handle” on the back of the template.
I taped a piece of wax paper, just big enough for my design, to another piece of cardboard. Then I slid the template between the wax paper and cardboard and then traced my design, using the desired colors with the squeeze bottles of royal icing.
Once I was done, I removed the template from under the wax paper and set aside the design to dry. I repeated this as many times as the number of cookies I wanted to make. It is best to let the icing dry at least overnight so that it is firm when you remove it from the wax paper.
Once I had iced the Thanksgiving turkey cookies with the brown powdered sugar icing, I then removed the royal icing decorations from the wax paper and arranged them on these turkey sugar cookies. You want to be very gentle removing these from the wax paper to prevent them from breaking or cracking. Either use a toothpick to gently prod the icing decorations off the wax paper, or place the wax paper on the edge of the counter or table and roll it down over the edge. This will easily dislodge the pieces.