I am very new to cake decorating and am currently enrolled in Wilton Course 2. My problem is that I have not been able to get my royal icing right and wondered if I could use 7 minute icing instead of the royal to make my flowers, etc?

If anyone has a detailed step by step instructional method with pictures on how to make royal icing, I would greatly appreciate it.

7 minute icing and Royal icing are night and day different. You can make flowers from either one, but the results will be wildly different.

Definitely not 7-minute. 7-minute frosting is a light, fluffy frosting that will separate in a couple of days. Royal frosting can last forever.

Royal is an absolute pain. I hate it too. My suggestion is...

1. Make sure your water is lukewarm.
2. You must beat for the entire 7-10 minutes. No exceptions.
3. Use 1 T. less water for stiff. Keep it stiff when colored and take to class stiff. You can reduce the consistency in class with your instructor's help.
4. Make sure everything you use is grease-free. Spatulas, bowls, beaters, tips. This is vital. Use super hot water and Dawn to clean everything. Toss your tips in a glass of water and nuke (make sure tips are covered by water) for 1 minute. Use only glass containers for storage. I bought these cute little Pyrex bowl sets at Target. Perfect little things.

http://www.wilton.com/recipes/recipesandprojects/icing/royal.cfm

This gives hand mixer versus stand mixer instructions.

Aw now, you can make flowers out of 7 minute icing. They won't last, but they'd be fine on a cake iced in the same icing.

Try Antonia74's recipe, I absolutely love it & we have terrible humidity here & I had a time w/ Wilton's recipe.

Plastic breaks it down, make sure everything is metal. Use foil to cover. When you start let your water and meringue powder sit for a couple minutes before you mix it.

Good luck