Royal icing or basic icing?

Cheating I know but you can buy small tubes of icing in many colours for just this purpose. They have a nozzle and you pipe directly from the tube.

Bit of a phaff to make royal icing just for icing gingerbread men. I’d only make that for a big posh cake tbh.

Go with the easy option.

Icing sugar and water is fine, just takes a little while to dry.

We also use it to attach tiny shapes cut from fondant icing (bought!!!) when we're feeling posh, though do that usually for other gingerbread shapes.

Just made a gingerbread train with our grandsons and just used ordinary icing to stick it all together. It was fine but did not set as hard as royal icing and took a bit longer to set. Make it fairly stiff - hard when you ave to pipe it.

You can buy a box of Royal Icing, just make up as much as you want by adding water, the rest can stay in the box.
Just as easy as using normal icing.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

If the piping is to hold its shape you need to make royal icing; icing sugar and water will be too runny.

I’ve been looking for Royal icing mix for ages and haven’t found any anywhere, but plenty of those tubs of ready made stuff. I wonder why?🤷🏼‍♀️

Message withdrawn at poster's request.