I had planed to spend this whole weekend working on learning different styles of cake decorating; I have never done any of this before. Saturday I got dragged in to watching my 2 infant nieces and 1 nephew. After spending all day and not the 2 or three hours I had planned (plus getting puked on 3 times) Saturday was a waste. I thought ok fine I won't get to practice as much as I want to but at least I can test out one method. I chose to give this royal Icing a try they had this nice "simple" purple cake with butterflies. I thought this is the best first cake. I spent all day getting all the icing mixed and the cake baked, and tracing the out lines of butterfly parts so they would be 3D. I thought I would use my pan as a weight to flatten my kind of rounded pan and when I lifted it off the top 1/2 inch came with it! After carefully pealing it off the pan and putting it back on the cake I decide to frost the cake, the icing was rough but it went on ok. Than time to peal the butterfly wings off the sheet provided for that purpose, I made 4 so that I would have enough to be safe...the first one crumbled to touch, great... So I freeze them and after an hour I try again the second wing falls apart but no so easily, so I bend the sheet and likely save one set. As I place the wing on the cake the tip breaks off! I try the other because it could be ok that way and the second wing just crumbles... ... Ok ok breath, I try to make small flowers but my icing that I made fresh is runny and they turn out as small blobs, I give up I am going to pull out the pre made stuff! I try to make a rose, how on earth does the nail help? In the end I made a flat blob strawberry with jelly beans around the boarder. How did something that looked so easy go so wrong? I know I should have looked up some of the things I was doing past this book I have, since it really explained nothing but my computer is so far from the kitchen and I was eager to get my hands wet. Maybe I should just give up on the royal icing all togather.

Please...please... some one help me feel better about this disaster!

I will post a pic if I find my digital camera but it is kind of painful to look upon.