Royal Icing Sagebrush

The official state flower of Nevada is the sagebrush, which can grow to an astonishing 12 feet in height. The closest I can come realistically with royal icing is a handful of sprigs, which would make a cute garnish on any desert-themed dessert. All you'll need are stiff-consistency royal icing in yellow and green, round tip #4, a flower nail, a Styrofoam block, a glue stick, parchment paper squares, and a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch. Start by sticking a parchment square to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick. 

 Pipe a cluster of stems, half an inch long or so.

 Pipe another layer of stems on top of these first few. There should be plenty of room to pipe at least another couple of sprigs on the same parchment square.

 Pipe a little dab of yellow icing at the end of each stem. You may need to touch your fingertip to the dusting pouch and tap the yellow peaks down a bit. Another project that uses these same colors is the royal icing rattlesnake; a good companion animal for the sagebrush!

Royal Icing Rattlesnake

Looking back on some of my earlier tiny royal icing creations, I notice they have one thing in common: they're pretty pretty. It's high time I roughed things up and piped something, well, venomous. What better than a snake (albeit, a teeny-tiny adorable one)? All you need is stiff consistency royal icing in colors of your choosing, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 blend of cornstarch and powdered sugar, a black AmeriColor Gourmet Writer, and parchment paper squares. You'll also need round tips #4 and #1.

You'll need a parchment paper square for each snake. Start by piping the body with the #4 tip (everything except for the head). Serpentine the icing in such a way that it touches itself and has more strength; you don't want that skinny body snapping in half when you slide it off the parchment. 

 Allow the body to firm up for a few minutes. Pipe the head as you would a stand-up stamen, blade of grass, or strand of hair; squeeze at the base to build up an anchor of icing, then pull the tip upward. I held it in place for a few seconds before pulling away.

 Touch a finger to the dusting pouch, then nudge the head into the position you'd like.

 While the head is firming up, pipe a few overlapping #1 dots to form the rattles.

When the head is dry, add a couple of dots for eyes with the Gourmet Writer. Use on your next cake that features snips, snails, and puppy dogs' tails.