I'm making royal icing for decorating cookies and since I'm almost out of the 'deb el just whites' that I had been using, I grabbed my new can of wilton meringue powder. I *thought* they were the same thing but, being the mom of a food-allergic child, I read the ingredient lists and they are not!

wilton meringue: corn starch, egg whites, sugar, gum arabic, calcium sulfate, citric acid, cream of tartar, silicon dioxide, and artificial flavor

deb el just whites: 100% dried egg whites


So....... can they be subbed one for the other? They are obviously very different products! And now I wonder how differently my icings (buttercream and royal) will act and taste if I do just switch over to the wilton product.

What do people typical use for the 'meringue powder' in royal icing?

I use the Wilton Meringue Powder for my royal icing.....I have also used it for making meringue on a cream pie too. I don't know if these two products are interchangeable though.

In the past I've used mixes for royal (everything but water in a bag) and those seemed fairly similar to the batch I made from 'scratch' earlier this week with the 'just whites' product. But I just made a batch with the wilton meringue powder and that icing seems quite different - much fluffier. Maybe I've never beat my royal enough to get to this fluffy stage (I've only done it a handful of times and always for cookies) or maybe it has to do with the difference in the products. I just don't know.

I'm just making icing for the kids to decorate cookies with for a 4th of july party, so they'll be mixing the yellow and blue left over from earlier this week with the red, white, and green I made with the new icing. I'll report back any difference I see once we decorate with it.

i use m. powder