Gingerbread decoration/piping technique
As promised, here are my tips and tricks on how to decorate your gingerbread the traditional way.
I know we are all not artists, and it is quite challenging to learn to do the delicate decorations on your cookies, but as long as you have a lot of patience, I am going to help you.
So first, we need to make the piping cream that is not runny, hardens fast, and still makes your cookies taste delicious.
YOU’LL NEED:
1 egg white*
approx.150g of powdered sugar (depends on the amount of the egg white, so just get a whole package and add as much as needed)
1 tbs lemon juice
1 - 2 tbs potato starch (you can do corn starch, but I prefer potato as it seems whiter)
*note: the piping dries on the air, so get your eggs in organic quality and from a verified source. Plus, I have been notified by my friends who are chemists that most of the issues with eggs are coming from the contact with the shell, so wash the eggshell with luke-warm soapy water just to be sure.
The tricks for the piping are to eliminate a chance for lumps in the sugar. And I know this will sound very OCD, but I run my sugar through 2 different sieves 3 - 4 times. The first two times, I do it through regular flour sieve to remove dry lumps. In the second two, I use a tea strainer that has thinner holes to remove bigger sugar chrystals that could mess your piping tube.
In a medium bowl whisk the egg white until it’s nice and runny. Then start adding the sugar. It’s the fourth running through the sieve. Mix continuously as you keep adding the sugar. Once the mixture starts to be white, sieve in the starch mix, then add the lemon. And then again, continue adding the sugar until the mixture is nice, glossy and thick.
How will you know it’s ready? Take a spoon, press the bottom of it to the mixture and see how the dripping strand reacts on the gingerbread. Does it stay in one place? Congratulations! Still bit runny? Slowly add in more and mix.
Now it’s time to get ready your piping bag. The hole needs to be very tiny and you need to have a tip inside. if you only make a hole in a decorating plastic bag, it will be much harder to keep a line. If you live in the Czech Republic, you can usually get the plastic bag with a hard tip on Christmas markets or in the store near cookie cutters.
AND NOW TO THE DECORATION ITSELF. HERE ARE MY TIPS
If you want a foolproof technique, go with dots and short lines. When piping a dot, you pretty much can’t mess it up and get the hang of it soon.
If you want your dots to be nicely separated, start with the longest distance, then do one dot in the middle and then again, middle, and again and so on.
You can also do a drop on top of a bigger drop. That looks very neat. Just wait for the first line to dry.
The same goes if you’d like to do dots connected on the line. Make the line first, let it dry and continue with the dots.