Question - Designer icing tubes and royal icing mix

Nix09

Hello, I'm wondering whether anybody has noticed discounted tubes of coloured icing and/or packets of royal icing mix in any supermarket/wholesaler or online? Both products are made by Silver Spoon among others, but all the supermarkets seem to sell them for near identical prices - I need a lot for gingerbread houses at the school fair so I'm looking for bargains!
Many thanks to anybody who can help.

frugal_shopper_2

Have you checked out the online cake decorating supply shops? There are often clearance sections with bargains to be had such as:
http://www.cake-stuff.com/clearance-corner-c-239.html

Regal icing will usually be referred to as sugarpaste most will be white & will have bulk discounts some will be ready coloured.

Tubes of writing icing tend to be expensive wherever you get them as most people favour piping bags or go for the more specialised colouring pens, sprays or dust.

Nix09

Thanks for that; it's not Regalice I need but royal icing mix to use as mortar on the houses. Great site though! I'd go for the piping bag approach to decorating, but it's for the children to do themselves and the tubes are far less likely to be horribly messy so I'm afraid we're stuck with the expensive option. I'm going to keep an eye on those clearance bargains for my own baking.

frugal_shopper_2

Sorry misread the OP, royal icing mix is just icing sugar with albumen powder aded to it at the rate of 20g albumen per 800g of icing sugar.
You can buy albumen powder from places such as
http://www.cakedecoratingstore.co.uk/pure-albumen.html
Recipe to make it up here:
http://www.sweetsuccess.uk.com/pure_albumen.asp

An alternative to tubes of icing would be icing bottles kids are usually fine using them. You can put whatever you want in them giving you more flexibility on colours of icing or the option to use other things such as melted chocolate & they can be reused in the future.
Generally speaking the ones with metal nozzles will take any standard piping nozzle but the ones with plastic nozzles tend to have non standard nozzles which can be a problem if the nozzle you need is not included.
Something along these lines, loads of other sets about if you search for icing bottles.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/CostMad-Birthday-Decorating-Coloured-Frosting/dp/B005SR2MP6/ref=sr_1_5?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1353565072&sr=1-5