How do you make sprinkles?

The most common question is "how do you make sprinkles?"

The mix

My sprinkles are basically icing, similar to what you might use to ice an oatmeal cookie. You can also use royal icing (like what you would use for sugar cookies) but that contains egg whites and I wanted my sprinkles to be vegan. I make the icing in a mixer, typically in 2-4 pound batches.

To color and flavor the sprinkles, I use freeze-dried fruits, cocoa powder (for chocolate sprinkles), vanilla extract (for vanilla sprinkles) 

The shape

I pipe long lines of sprinkles, then cut them with a multi-wheel pastry cutter after they have set a little bit. 

Drying

It takes 4-6 hours to dry the sprinkles. Once dry, I scrape them off of each parchment paper.

Packaging

I store the sprinkles in quart sized containers organized by flavor, and package them as needed. Since some flavors are used in multiple mixes, I keep most sprinkles separated by flavor rather than packaged as mixes.