Royal Icing Lipsticks

Girly-girl cakes are quite the rage, and invariably seem to feature life-size lipsticks crafted out of fondant. I wanted to try piping teeny-tiny cupcake-sized lipsticks out of royal icing; as you can see, there's not much to them. All you need is stiff consistency royal icing in black and whatever lipstick color you'd like, round tips #12 and #10, parchment paper squares, an offset spatula, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, a flower nail, glue stick, and Styrofoam block to rest the nail in (or just pipe directly on the parchment paper squares on any flat surface like your countertop). Start by sticking a parchment square to the glue stick with a dab from the glue stick. 

 Pipe a #12 cylinder of black icing about 3/4" long; keep the tip almost flat against the surface. Tap the offset spatula against the dusting pouch, and use it to flatten both ends.

 Pipe a cylinder for each lipstick tube.

 Pipe the lipstick itself with the #10 tip. Butt the tip against one end of the black cylinder, squeeze out about 1/4", then angle the tip to a 45 degree angle…

 …then slide your dusted angled spatula in between the tip and the icing and pull the tip away.

Remove the spatula before the icing has too much of a chance to cling to it. Touch a fingertip to the dusting pouch and neaten the tip so it has that iconic, chiseled shape. 

 You'll probably also want to pipe some royal icing eyeshadow (perfect for any girly-girl cupcake, cake pop, petits-fours; any tiny dessert that needs something just cute perched on top).