Sprinkles: yellow, white and pink

When my chocolate bar got over, I went to 'Bakers Needs' for a refill and found a bottle filled with really colourful sprinkles up in the front of the shop. I was tempted to get some and I could imagine how it would look on top a cake with snow white icing. Hm, does it really matter that I have never even once done any icing on any of the cakes I have ever baked. I can still imagine and do have plans.

After I have made my own colour from beetroot, I decided to try my hands on making some sprinkles too. I could think about 3 colours; the pink I have made, white by keeping it plain and yellow by adding some turmeric (though it turned peach instead), may be some brown too with some coffee or cocoa powder. When I did it I made the first 3 and one darker version of pink by adding a little extra beet paste. I was pretty disappointed with the pink I got from the colour I made from beetroot, it just dint match the colour I had in my head.

When I went about searching for instructions, everywhere I encountered the same 5 ingredients - powdered sugar, egg white, essence, colour and salt. The instructions looked easy like a breeze but doing it turned out to be something altogether different. First the one egg white looked too little for 1 cup of sugar powder. But when I mixed it together it was indeed enough or may be a little too much as the paste became a little runny. I was worried that the lines will run into each other after I piped them out, it did a little.

By the time I finished piping the dark pink the white was already looking dried on top, anyway I left it to dry for 24 hours as instructed. After that when I started taking the sprinkles off the paper, the only one which would come off is the peach one, none of the others would. I had to roll the whole paper and dump it inside the dust bin.

I couldn't give up on my sprinkles just like that. So after a few days I tried the beet colour again, this time it became purple. The piping bag felt so constipated, I got a wrist pain once I finished piping. Then I figured that my powdered sugar is not fine enough and made another set with glucose and kept it white. This time instead of piping them out on butter paper I piped them onto lightly greased steel plate and rubbed them off from the plate when it was dry.

The final results were not that bad, though the whole thing turned out to be an adventure I was not prepared for. I started imagining yellow, white and pink and ended up with peach, white and purple. Anyway they have gone inside the fridge in an airtight bottle till I decide on what to do with it.
The natural colours are so lame. I would have loved to get some real bright colours in there. I hope I will be able to find some non carcinogenic colours which I can trust and then I will make some real good looking sprinkles soon.

Now the next question is where am I going to do with it? May be it is time for the checkerboard cake with snow white icing and sprinkles on top.