The small angled chisel tip #264 by Ateco is one of those I never thought I'd find a use for. That is, until I recently stuck it on a piping bag, gave it a squeeze, and thought the resulting extruded icing bore more than a slight resemblance to bacon. Which brings me to today's post: royal icing bacon and eggs. You'll need parchment paper squares, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, round tips #12 and #8, tip #264, and royal icing in white, yellow and red. If you really want to get realistic with the bacon, stripe the red bag with white and/or pink. Start by loading the white bag with the #12 tip. Hold it just above a parchment square and squeeze while moving randomly to create the free-form edge of the egg's white.
Piping the bacon is easy; just attach the tip #264 to the red icing and squeeze firmly. To most, it will look like nothing more than a ruffly red ribbon, but I think its close proximity to that very realistic-looking egg really sells it as bacon.
When the white has firmed up a bit, pipe the yellow yolk using the #8 tip. Tap down any peak that forms by touching a fingertip to the dusting pouch then tapping it to the peak to round it off.
Use these decorations to spruce up breakfast pastries, muffins, pancakes, whatever, in a most unexpected way.
