Tuesday Tips: Icing Bags - by Lisa

I know, I know...it's Wednesday, but I had you for a second there, right? I have been doing a lot of baking this week, but sadly none of the recipes are new ones. I made chocolate chip cookies, cornbread, gingersnaps, decorated sugar cookies, and I will be making carrot cake and scones tomorrow and Friday. Why the baking bonanza? Well part of it was for meals/snacks around here, and the other part is that I'm am member of a philanthropic Mother's Club here, and their annual craft show/bake sale is this weekend. Club members are required to bake 4 items (and package them prettily as well), and I'd rather bake things I know than take a chance foisting off a new recipe on some unsuspecting patron. So that has left me in a bit of a bind for this week's entry.

After some pondering, I decided to post a helpful tip for working with royal icing. When decorating sugar cookies, you will likely burn through a lot of plastic disposable pastry bags. Sometimes it can be worth it to rinse them out and reuse them, but that can get to be a chore. Several months ago, I came across a brilliant idea on Pinterest to aid in this dilemma. By using this method, you can easily reuse the disposable pastry bags AND have less mess to clean up!

 Here's what you do:

First tear off a decent size piece of plastic wrap and lay it flat on the counter.

Next, plop your desired amount of icing in the middle.

Wrap your icing so that it is sealed in the plastic and then twist the ends.
(I recently figured out it is extra smart to tie off the end you're squeezing from.)

Fold down your icing bag, insert the untied end of the plastic tube into the bag and pull out as much as you can thru the coupler.

Snip off the excess plastic, apply your decorating tip, and screw on the other half of your coupler.

Voila! You have a completely mess free pastry bag full of icing. When you are done decorating, simply remove your tip, carefully extract the plastic tube from the bag (from the wide end), and dispose. That's it!