It has been years since I have gotten messy with food. I have a day off from work coming up, so I thought I'd give it a shot again.

My hair is a little shorter than shoulder length and I'm looking for something that I can spread into my hair that will dry and get hard. Thinking about feeling my hair frozen or locked into place on top of my head gets me excited. I hope to find something that would be fairly easy to clean up with soap and water when I'm finished.

I was thinking about using canned frosting, but I am not sure if any type will dry in the air. If that won't work, is there something else that could be used, perhaps with a hair dryer, that would harden but be able to be dissolved away later?

Maybe use candiquick? It's something for making chocolate dipped pretzels and strawberries. Or something similar, so it will dry in the air as it cools, of course be careful with the hot molten candy... And provide pics for evidence? Not sure about the cleanup. Given the season, these are in abundance and possibly on special...good luck!

~ACD

Buy some got2b Ultra Glued Invincible styling gel. it isn't food or anything (or even technically WAM?), but when it dries, your hair is practically a brick.

I use it to help style my hair sometimes and it's the strongest gel I've ever found. I could leave it in for days if I wanted and my hair would never move an inch until i washed it out. If you want your hair locked into place, this is the stuff to use.

I really want to get messy with food, but the hair gel does sound like it would give me the feeling I want. I'll keep that in mind.


Would love to hear more ideas from people, or hear from those who have done frosting in their hair (or another person's hair).

You could always try something like http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Iced-Gingerbread-Cookies/step5/Bonus-Recipe-Hard-Set-Icing/

I suspect that if you're willing to pop outside for a bit (and you're in the northern hemisphere, somewhere cold), you might be able to get it to set in your hair relatively quickly...

Don't know about getting it out again!

Hard set icing sounds perfect!



I'm just not brave enough to go outside with a head full of white icing. I guess it probably takes a while to dry at room temp.

The comments in this recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/royal-icing-recipe.html have people warning that it dries really fast. Its ratios of egg white to icing sugar are different than the first link, so you might be able to play with the proportions to get your desired thickness and drying speed.

Let us know how this turns out, I'd love to know how well it works!

What if it were coloured icing?

Funny that you should suggest that. When I was going to bed last night, I was wondering about royal icing. I know that's what is used for holding together gingerbread houses.

With all of those egg whites, I wonder how easy it will be to dissolve. I'll have to do some testing before applying to myself.

Egg whites aren't a problem, Fluff is mostly egg white and it dissolves in hot water with no issues.

I'm procrastinating buying xmas gifts, so I just did a couple of tests. I tried a Royal Icing recipe with more sugar (2 egg whites, 300g icing sugar). It dried at room temperature very quickly (like within 5 minutes there was a matte outer shell that could be touched without picking up residue). What I didn't like is that the thinner areas crack and crumble when dry, so it kind of makes a mess of dried flaky icing.

So what I did next is mixed in varying proportions of Fluff - the Fluff adds enough elasticity so that the thinner areas no longer crack and crumble. For my purposes I settled on 2 parts Royal Icing to 1 part Fluff (by weight). That takes a lot of the super stickiness edge off the Fluff which makes it much easier to shampoo into hair, but the texture is still great. Very smooth, thick, and sticky enough without pulling.

I'm guessing it never really hardens like pure Royal Icing does, but given enough time (30-40 minutes), it does form a dry enough outer layer that you can touch gently. If left longer it might get harder, I'm not sure.

The mixture is definitely a plus over pure Fluff, which never dries so when leaving it in hair for a long time ends up slowly dripping out.

I loved reading about your experiment. I wish I wasn't in bed with the flu so that I could get to the store for some icing sugar and fluff and give it a shot. I will keep this in mind for another day so that I can try it out.

I can confirm that the Royal Icing and Fluff mix (2:1 ratio) does eventually harden. I left a glob overnight, about 8 hours later it was basically as hard as just pure Royal Icing, maybe with just a tad more "bounce/elasticity" due to the Fluff.

So if you're patient enough to wait 8+ hours with it in your hair, you should get the effect that you want. It still washes out easily with hot water.

8+ hours? No, I'm not that patient. I wish that I was.