Make Your Own Sprinkles!

I love making cookies for Valentine's Day ALMOST as much as I do for Christmas! I think it has something to do with all the pink and red and white colors. :-) Makes me happy!

So here's today's Afternoon "bump" for your cookie-making inspiration!

Originally posted on 8/21/2011:

TheKitchn.com

Because sometimes you just need to make your own sprinkles!

But seriously, I almost NEVER  put sprinkles on my cookies, cakes, etc. because I hate those sprinkles in the jar that taste like they are made of wax!

I mean really, here you spend all this time making these DELICIOUS, HOMEMADE treats FROM SCRATCH...and then you top them off with sprinkles made with "Sugar, Cornstarch, Rice Flour, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Soybean, Cottonseed), Gum Arabic, Xanthan Gum, Natural And Artificial Flavor, Mono- And Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Blue 1, Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6."???

But for me it's less about the actual ingredients and more about how they taste.  The stuff in the bottle, in my opinion, is yucky!  Same reason I don't buy donuts with sprinkles

The PROBLEM is....sprinkles are so PRETTY!!!  Talk about your dilemma's!!! :-)


Well fear not!  Thanks to this great tutorial from The Kitchn, now you can make your own HOMEMADE sprinkles with nothing but sugar, egg whites, flavoring and a pinch of salt!  AND you can make them any color your can imagine!


So enjoy this recipe for Homemade Decorative Sprinkles from TheKitchn.com and go SPRINKLE SOMETHING!

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Homemade Decorative Sprinkles

Ingredients    

4 ounces (about 2 cups) confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon Just Egg Whites
1 tablespoon warm water, plus extra as needed
1/4 teaspoon vanilla, almond, or lemon flavoring
Pinch salt
Tools
Parchment or wax paper
Food coloring paste (optional)
Toothpicks
Pastry bag
Pastry tip with very small round hole, such as Wilton No. 2

Instructions

1. Lay a piece of wax paper out on a clean surface. Gather your ingredients. Decide how you want to flavor your sprinkles. You can leave them unflavored, or use vanilla or another flavoring. I used Fiori di Sicilia from King Arthur Flour, which gave my sprinkles a distinct taste of Creamsicles.
2. Sift the confectioner's sugar into a medium-sized bowl. It's very important to sift the sugar in this case, because even the tiniest lump will clog your pastry tip later. So sift the sugar through a sieve or a sifter.
3. About Just Egg Whites, or powdered egg whites: This is a substitute for raw egg. You could also use about half of a raw egg white, but I find this stuff useful for royal icing and other recipes that call for raw egg white.
4. Whisk 1 teaspoon of the powdered egg whites together with 1 tablespoon of warm water. Whisk until smooth and foamy. Whisk in the flavoring and a pinch of salt.
5. Mix the egg white liquid into the powdered sugar and stir to combine. The mixture will probably look clumpy and thick, as pictured.
6. Add additional water in 1/2 teaspoon increments until the mixture is smooth and liquid, yet still thick.
7. I am not giving a specific amount of water here, because it depends on the powdered sugar and even the humidity of the day. But you want a smooth, thick, pipe-able frosting like the one pictured above.
8. Choose your food coloring, if using. It's best to use the paste or gel type of food coloring, as opposed to liquid. The colors are more vibrant, and they don't significantly change the texture of your icing the way extra liquid will.
9. Using the tip of a toothpick place a dot of food coloring in your icing mix.
10. Stir thoroughly until the color is completely distributed.
11. Set up your pastry bag with your #2 (or similar) tip.
12. Fill the bag and press any air pockets out of the icing.
13. Pipe out a long, thin line of icing on the parchment or wax paper. It's best to keep the line as straight as you can, but it doesn't need to be perfectly straight. (See how wavy mine is!)
14. Repeat until all the icing is used up. Important: Let the icing strips dry for a full 24 hours, or at least overnight. In winter, like now, I let mine dry for about 20 hours, and they were fine.
15. When they are completely dry, line them up evenly against the edge of a flat knife, like a cleaver or santoku.
16. Chop into small pieces, or longer ones for jimmies. Store in an airtight container until using.