Hi everyone. I'd like to get a royal icing recipe that does not get hard. Need to cover a fruit cake. Is Meringue powder the same as powdered egg white?

Meringue powders have sugar, cornstarch, and gums to stabilize RI, whereas powdered egg whites do not.

Toba Garrett's Glace functions kind of like a royal icing...well, as implied by the name, it's really a glaze. I have used it in place of RI on gingerbread cookies and it tastes great and dries much softer than RI. Dries to touch, stackable (for cookies, just to use an example) yet soft enough to bite through. I think it work really well on a cake.

The recipe is here on CC http://cakecentral.com/recipes/2119/toba-garretts-glace-icing - you will notice it doesn't use meringue powder (or ew).

Meringue powder, as stated above, contains other ingredients besides just the powedered egg whites. When making royal icing with just powdered egg whites, you will have to add cream of tartar.

If you add corn syrup to your royal icing, it will not dry as hard.

For my fruit cakes, I prefer to brush them with a thin layer of melted apricot jam, then cover with marzipan and then with white fondant and then decorate using royal. So that is another option!